
Class 

Book 

Copyright N° 



(WYKHillT DEPOSIT. 



Biblical Psychology 



A Series of Preliminary Studies 



By OSWALD CHAMBERS 

Principal, Bible Training College 
London, England 




GOD'S REVIVALIST OFFICE 

RINGGOLD. YOUNG AND CHANNING STS. 

CINCINNATI, OHIO 



Copyrighted, 1914, by Gold's Revivalist Office. 



B5L4-S 

C4? 



JUN.I2I9I4 

©CIA376257 



PREFATORY NOTE 



This book is simply compiled from verbatim re- 
ports of my lectures on Biblical Psychology, deliv- 
ered at the Bible Training College, 45 North Side, 
Clapham Common, London, England, during 1911. 

The reports were taken by my wife and sent on 
to the editors of the " Revivalist, " who now, out of 
the generosity of their hearts, are publishing them in 
book form. 

May this "Introduction to the Study of Biblical 
Psychology'' stir up the minds of the saints, lest Satan 
as an angel of light instil error. (2 Pet. 1 : 12, 13.) 

Oswald Chambers. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 
Man : His Creation, Calling and Communion 1 

CHAPTER II. 
Man's Making 10 

CHAPTER III. 
Man's Unmaking 17 

CHAPTER IV. 
Readjustment By Redemption 30 

CHAPTER V. 
Soul : The Essence, Existence and Expression 43 

CHAPTER VI. 
Fundamental Powers of The Soul 56 

CHAPTER VII. 
Fleshly Presentation of the Soul 70 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Past, Present, and Future of the Soul 85 

CHAPTER IX. 
Heart : The Radical Region of Life 98 

CHAPTER X. 
The Radiator of Personal Life 107 



CHAPTER XI. 
The Radiator of Personal Life (Cont'd.) 120 

CHAPTER XII. 
The Rendezvous x>i Perfect Life 133 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Ourselves : I ; Me ; Mine 151 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Ourselves as "Known." "Me" 166 

CHAPTER XV. 
Ourselves as "Ourselves." "Self" 182 

CHAPTER XVI. 
Ourselves and Conscience 197 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Spirit : The Domain and Dominion of Spirit 212 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
Mundane Universe 227 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Man's Universe 243 

CHAPTER XX. 
Man's Universe (Cont'd.) 259 



CHAPTER I. 

MAN: HIS CREATION, CALLING AND 
COMMUNION. 

(Although the passages quoted appear as "texts," they are 
really portions of connected revelation.) 

1 CONDITIONS BEFOKE MAN'S CREATION. Gen. 1:1. 

(a) Celestial Creations. Job 38: 4-7. 

(b) Celestial Catastrophe, Isa. 14: 12; Luke 10: 18. 

(c) Celestial Condemnation. John 8: 44; Jude 6. 

2 CONDITIONS LEADING TO MAN'S CREATION. Neh. 

9: 6. 

(a) Terrestrial Chaos. Gen. 1: 2. 

(b) Terrestrial Creations. Gen. 1: 2-25. 

(c) Terrestrial Cosmos. Gen. 1: 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31. 

3 CLIMAX OF CREATION. Gen. 1: 26, 27. 

(a) The "Son of God." Gen. 1: 27; Luke 3:38. 

(b) The Six Days' Work. Gen. 1:28-31. 

(c) The Sabbath Rest. Gen. 2: 1-3. 

1. Conditions Before Man's Creation. 

Between Genesis 1, verses 1 and 2, there is a great 
hiatns. Verse 1 refers to an order of things before the 
reconstruction referred to in verse 2. I mean- by 
(a) celestial creations, the creations that were be- 
fore men and our system of things as we understand 
them. These celestial creations all belong to the per- 
iod before man. The creations first alluded to then are 
not men, but something other than man. Job 38, verses 
4 to 7, has a distinct reference to such a time when 
the "sons of God shouted for joy." Who were these 

1 



2 Man: His Creation, 

sons of God? They were certainly not men; they 
were unquestionably angels and archangels, and you 
will find that the indirect inference from the Bible is 
that God had put that former world under the charge 
of an archangel "Lucifer." 

The Bible also alludes to (b) a catastrophe be- 
fore man, was created, which makes the first and 
second verses of the first chapter of Genesis 
understandable. God gave the rule of this uni- 
verse to Lucifer, and he opposed himself to 
God's authority and rule, and dragged everything 
down with him, and consequently called forth on this 
earth a tremendous judgment, which resulted in chaos 
"and the earth was without form and void." You 
will find this catastrophe referred to in such passages 
as Isaiah 14:12, and Luke 10:18, "I beheld Satan 
as lightning fall from Heaven." When did out Lord 
behold this? Surely it is legitimate to suggest that 
it refers to the period before our Lord's incarna- 
tion, when He was with God, in the very begin- 
ning, before all things. (This particular verse is 
frequently taken to refer to the time yet to be, and 
that our Lord is annihilating time in His forelook.) 
These verses are like mountain peaks revealing a 
whole tableland of God's revelation of the order of 
things before man was created. 

Then comes (c) the condemnation of the "angels," a 
celestial condemnation, nothing whatever to do with 
man, but the condemnation of Lucifer and all his an- 
gels. (Jude 6.) When- Jesus Christ alludes to the 



Calling and Communion. 3 

beginning, He does not mean the beginning of man; 
He means the beginning of the creation of God which 
was long enough before man was created. (See John 
8: 44.) f ("Hell" has nothing whatever to do with man 
primarily.) Hell is a place of angelic condemnation. 
You will never find that God says Hell was made for 
man. It is true that it is the only place for a man 
who rejects God's salvation. Hell was the result of 
a distinct condemnation that was passed by God on 
celestial beings, and is as eternal as those celestial 
anarchists. 

There are three amazing episodes that indicate the 
conditions before the creation of man, viz.: that the 
archangels and the angels governed a wonderful world 
which God created in the beginning, and which God's 
Spirit is alluding to by that phrase in Job, "The sons 
of God sang together.' ' Lucifer fell, and with him 
all his angels in a tremendous ruin (clearly mentioned 
in Genesis 1:2), and "the earth was without form and 
void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, 
and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the 
waters." Without some such indication, the second 
verse would be unintelligible, for to say that "in the 
beginning God created the Heaven and the earth," and 
then to say that "the earth was without form and 
void" is a confusion and a confounding. The infer- 
ence is that between the epochs referred to in the 
first and second verses there has occurred this catastro- 
phe which the Bible does not say much about. The evi- 
dent purpose of the Bible is to tell us what God's 



4 Man: His Creation, 

purpose is with man. Roughly outlining that purpose, 
we might say that God created man to counteract 
the devil. 

2. Conditions Leading to Man's Creation. 

(a) Terrestrial Chaos. (Gen. 1:2.) Satan has 
been the means of the ruin of the first created order, 
and now God begins to create another order out of 
the confusion of ruin. "Void" means the aftermath 
of destruction by judgment, or the result of Divine 
judgment. 

(b) Terrestrial Creations. God began to create 
things. Genesis 1 : 2-25, gives a detailed account of 
the creation of the earth and the life on it. The Bible 
nowhere says that God set processes at work, and out 
of these processes were evolved the things which 
appear. The Bible says the things of this world were 
created by a distinct "fiat" of God. If the Bible 
entirely agreed with modern science, it would soon be 
"out of date," because modern science is in the very 
nature of things bound, to change. Genesis 1 indi- 
cates that God created the earth and the life on the 
earth to fit the world for man. 

(c) Terrestrial Cosmos. The order and beauty of 
this world were created by God for man. Genesis 1, 
verses 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25 and 31, all say that "God 
saw that it was good." After the judgment by God 
on the previous order, God created "a new thing," 
to fit all for a totally new being whom no angel had 
ever seen before. He was to be a man, and he was to 
stand at the end of the six days' work as a creation 



Calling and Communion. 5 

of earth, and at the threshold of God's Sabbath day. 
God created man, not <an angel, and not God Himself. 
He created him to be a unique being. Man was related 
to this earth, created out of this earth, and yet he was 
created in the image of God, whereby God could 
prove Himself more than a match for the devil 
by a creation a little lower that the angels (the 
order of beings Satan belongs to). This is, as it 
were, God's tremendous experiment in this creation. 
He puts man at the head of the Terrestrial Crea- 
tion. The whole meaning of the creation of the 
world is to fit and prepare it for this wonderful being 
called Man that God had in. His mind. There is nothing 
in the Bible about evolving and developing man as a 
"survival of the fittest," or the "process of natural 
selection." The Bible reveals that we are earth 
and spirit, a combination of the two. The devil is 
spirit, just as God is; the angels are spirit; but when 
we come to a man, man is to be earth and spirit. 

3. Climax of Creation. 

(a) "Son of God!" -(Luke 3: 38.) Adam' was a son 
of God. As far as the terrestrial is concerned, there 
is only one other primal "Son of God" in the Bible, 
and He is Jesus Christ. This is an important point. 
Yet we are called "sons of God," but how? By being 
reinstated through the atonement of Jesus Christ. We 
are not the "sons of God" by natural generation. 
Have you noticed that Adam did not come into the 
world as we do? Neither (lid Adam come into the 
world as Jesus Christ came. Adam was not " begot- 



6 Man: His Creation, 

ten;" Jesus Christ was. Adam was " created/ ' God 
created Adam, He did not beget him. We are all 
"generated," we are not created beings. Adam was 
the "son of God," and God made him as well as 
everything else that was created. 

In Genesis 1:27 we read, "So God created man in 
His own image, in the image of God created He him; 
male and female created He them." This is a point 
of importance. "Adam and Eve" are both needed 
before the image of God can be perfectly presented. 
God, as it were, is all that the best manhood presents 
us with, and all that the best womanhood presents 
us with. This aspect will be dealt with again in 
subsequent lectures. 

(b) "The Six Days' Work." This word "day" 
unquestionably means roughly what we understand by 
twenty-four hours, and has no such meaning as "Day 
of Atonement" or "Day of Judgment." These terms 
do not refer to a "solar day," but to a "period of years 
of time." The devotion to the ephemeral scientific doc- 
trine of evolution must be held responsible for the 
endeavor to make the Bible mean periods of years, 
instead of a solar day. The particular unparabolic use 
of the term "morning and evening" in Genesis dis- 
tinctly indicates a solar day. Man was the end of the 
six days' work. In God's plan the whole of the six 
days' creation was meant for man. (The tendency now- 
adays is to put the six days' work of creation above 
man. Men and women are far more concerned about 
dogs and cats than about human beings. It is the 



Calling and Communion. 7 

reverse of what God made it. The whole purpose of 
creation in God's plan is man.) 

There is not only the tendency to exalt animals 
above man, but there is the new speculation of the su- 
perman, i. e., a doctrine which holds that man, as we 
understand him and as the Bible reveals him, is not 
the climax of creation, but there is a higher race yet 
to be called "the superman/ ' and that man is as in- 
ferior to this being that is going to be as the ape is 
to him. Now all through the New Testament Jesus 
Christ foretold, and the Spirit of God, foretold, that 
we were going to have the "worship of man" installed, 
and it has begun already, it is in our midst to-day. 
We are told that Jesus Christ and God are simply 
ceasing to be of importance to the modern man, and 
what we are worshipping more and more now is 
humanity, and this is slowly merging into a new phase. 
All the "up-to-date" minds are looking towards the 
manifestation of a "superman/' a being much greater 
than the being we know as man. II. Thessalonians 
2, gives us the picture of the head of this great 
expectation. He is to be the darling of every re- 
ligion; there is to be a consolidation of religions, 
and races and everything on the face of the earth, 
a great socialism. The ethical standard for the su- 
perman claims to be higher than Jesus Christ's. 
The tendency noticeable already is that people object 
to some of Christ's teaching, such as "Loving your 
neighbor as yourself/' they say, "That is selfish, 
you must love your neighbor and not think of 



8 Man: His Creation, 

yourself/' The doctrine of the superman is absolute 
sinless perfection. We are going to evolve a being, 
they say, who has got to the place where he cannot 
be tempted. This is all an emanation from Satan. 
Man is the climax of creation. He is on a stage a 
little lower than the angels, and God is going to over- 
throw the devil by this being who is less than angelic. 
God has, as it were, put him in the "open field," 
and He allows the devil to do exactly what he likes 
up to a certain point, because God says, "I know that 
He who is in you is greater than he that is against 
you." That is the explanation in our own spiritual 
life-setting. Satan is to be humiliated by man, by 
the Spirit of God in man, and by poor fallen beings, 
too, like we were, but all by the wonderful regeneration 
through Jesus Christ. 

Man is the head and the purpose of the six days' 
creation. Man's body has those •constituents in it 
that connect it with the earth; it has fire and water 
and all the elements of the life of animals, and con- 
sequently, God keeps us here. It is man's domain, 
and we are going to be here again after the terrestrial 
cremation. "Hereafter" without the devil, without 
the sin and without the wrong. We are going to be 
here marvelously redeemed in this wonderful place 
which God made very beautiful, and which has been, 
played havoc with by sin, and creation is waiting for 
the "manifestation of the sons of God." 

Not only is man the head and the climax of the 
six days' work, but he is the beginning of, and stands 



Calling and Communion. 9 

at the threshold of (c) the very Sabbath of God. God's 
heart is, as it were, absolutely at rest now that He 
has created man, even in spite of the fact of the fall, 
and all else; God is absolutely confident that the 
whole thing will turn out as He said it would. The 
devil has laughed at God's hope for thousands of 
years and has ridiculed and scorned that hope. 
God is not upset or alarmed about the final issue. 
He is certain that man will bruise the serpent's head. 
This refers to those of us who are born again through 
Jesus Christ's amazing atonement. 

The first condition was chaos, God created angels 
and they fell and there was ruin; than God remade 
the void into a new creation, and by making a being 
never existent before, a being a "little lower than the 
angels. " 



CHAPTER II. 

MAN: HIS CREATION, CALLING AND 
COMMUNION. 

MAN'S MAKING. 

4 THE MAN OP GOD'S MAKING. Gen. 2: 4-25. 

(a) The Image of God. John 4: 24. 

(b) The Image of God in Angels. Gen. 6: 2; Ps. 89: 6; 
Job 1: 6; 38: 7. 

(c) The Image of God in Man. Gen. 1:26; Ps. 8:4, 5. 

5 THE MANNEE OP MAN'S MAKING. John 1: 3. 

(a) Man's Body. Gen. 2: 7. 

(b) Man's Soul. Acts 17: 28. 

(c) Man's Self -Consciousness. Prov. 20: 27; 1 Cor. 2: 11. 

N. B. Visible creations that surround man are not in the 
image of God. 
Some notes will be given on the appearances of angels 

in our material universe. 
Some notes also on the human representations of God. 

4. The Man of God's Making. 
God's heart, so to speak, is at rest now that He 
has created man. i(Gen. 2:4-25.) 

(a) The Image of God. (John 4:24.) "God is 
spirit." This is a mountain-peak text which reveals 
a whole tableland of God's revelation about Himself. 

(b) The Image of God in Angels. The phrase ' ' sons 
of God" in the Old Testament always refers to angels, 
and we have to take from the context whether they 
are "fallen angels" or not. Angels have no physi- 

10 



Man, His Making. 11 

cal frame, they are not like man, and they are not 
manifested after this order of things. If, however, 
they are called "sons of God," the inference is clear 
that they bear the image of God. 

(c) The Image of God in Man. The image of God 
in its primary reference to man must refer to the hid- 
den or interior life of man. 

From these three revelation facts in God's Book, 
men have reasoned backwards. They have said that 
because men have bodies, God has a corporiety, too. 
This mistake began centuries ago and it is continually 
being revived, the reason being that the Bible does 
refer to the form of God. For instance, the Old Testa- 
ment alludes over and over again to what is called 
the " anthropomorphic " view of God. God is rep- 
resented as having hands and limbs and looking like 
a man, and from this the inference is easy that surely 
God has a body like man. The answer is that all 
the Old Testament pictures of God are forecasts of 
the Incarnation, and have nothing to do with stating 
that God is in the form of a man. Read the passages 
in Isaiah alone, and they will reveal the apparently 
conflicting statements about God; He is represented 
in many contradictory phrases, yet immediately you 
read the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, 
all these contradictions blend in that unique Being, 
Jesus Christ, the second Adam. However, the Bible 
does speak of a "form of God" (Phil. 2:6), but the 
error arises from our too readily inferring that 
form" means physical body. The great Triune God 



a 



12 Biblical Psychology. 

has "form/' and the term used for that form is 
11 glory.' ' Our Lord refers to this in John 17: 5. Our 
word " Trinity M is an attempt to convey the exter- 
nally disclosed divine nature itself, and " glory' ' is 
the Bible term for conveying the idea of the external 
(so to speak) form of that Triune Being. This will 
be alluded to several times in the course of our studies 
in Biblical Psychology, and we will thus get familiar 
with this profound revelation. 

(Sometimes God is referred to as the sun, but the 
sun is never stated to be made in the image of God, 
though there are illustrations in God's Book drawn 
from the sun to illustrate Him. But nowhere has it 
ever been stated that God made the sun in His own 
image.) 

Angels in the Bible record certainly do appear to 
men. You may take this as a correct inference from 
the revealed facts in God's Word, that angels have the 
power of will to appear to human beings, when those 
human beings are in suitable, subjective conditions. 
That power is given to "good" and "bad" angels 
alike. You will find this inference a great guide re- 
garding "Spiritualism." Spiritualism is not a trick, 
according to the Bible; it is a fact. Man can com- 
municate with beings of a different order from his own, 
and he can put himself into a state of subjectivity 
in which angels can appear. Angels may thus be said 
to have a power of will to materialize themselves. It 
is probably to this that Paul refers in Romans 8 : 38 
and Ephesians 6 : 12. 



Man, His Making. 13 

The Image of God in Man. The image of God 
in man is primarily spiritual, yet it has to be mani- 
fested in the body of a man also. We read in Psalm 
8:5 that God made man a "little lower than the an- 
gels,' ' that might as well be translated a "little lower 
than God and the angels.' ' You will find that man's 
chief glory and dignity is that he was made of the 
earth to manifest the image of God in that substance. 
We are apt to think because we are made of earth 
that this is our humiliation, but it is not so. It 
is the very point that God's Word makes most of. 
He made man of the dust of the ground, and the 
redemption of Jesus Christ is for the dust of the 
ground as well. 

Man's body before he degenerated, must have been 
dazzling with light. (We get this by direct infer- 
ence from Genesis 3:7.) Man was obviously naked 
before his disobedience, and the death of his union 
with God instantly revealed itself in his body. (See 
next chapter.) 

5. The Manner of Man's Making. 

God did not create man by direct fiat but by His 
own deliberate power He moulded him. (See Gen. 
1:26, 27.) The first mistake we must note is the in- 
ference that the soul was made along with the body; 
the Bible does not say it was. The Bible says that 
the body was created prior to the soul. Man's body 
was made by God, and it was built out of the "dust 
of the ground," that means that man is constituted 
to have affinity with everything on this earth. This 



14 Biblical Psychology. 

is not his calamity, it is his peculiar dignity. (We dot 
not further our spiritual life "in spite of our bodies/ ' 
but in and by means of our bodies.) Then we read 
that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, 
and man became a "soul-enlivened nature.' ' There 
is another breathing mentioned in John 20 : 22, when 
our risen Lord breathed on the disciples and said, 
"Receive ye the Holy Spirit." This is not exactly the 
same thing as Genesis 2:7. In the latter reference 
God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life 
which became man's spirit, not God's; but in the 
former reference in John, Jesus Christ breathed 
into His disciples Holy Spirit. "When God breathed 
into man's nostrils the breath of life, man did 
not become a living God, man became a "liv- 
ing soul." Thus in man, degenerate or regenerate, 
there are three aspects, spirit, soul and body. The 
uniting of man's personality, body, soul and spirit, 
may be brought about in various ways. The Bible re- 
veals that sensuality will do it (Eph. 5:5); that 
drunkenness will do it (Eph. 5:18); and finally 
that the devil will do it (Luke 11:21) ; but the Holy 
Ghost alone through Jesus Christ will do it rightly, 
this is the only at-one-ment. When our personality 
is sanctified, it is not God's Spirit that is sancti- 
fied, it is out spirit (1 Thess. 5:23), and cleans- 
ing from filthiness of the spirit refers to man's 
spirit. God's inbreathing into man's nostrils called 
into actual existence his soul, which was potentially 
in the body (potentially means existing in possibility, 



Man, His Making. 15 

not in actuality). So man's soul is not his body or 
his spirit, but is that creation which holds his spirit 
and his body together, and is the medium of ex- 
pressing his spirit in his body. It is not true to state 
that man's soul moulds his body; it is his spirit that 
moulds his body, and his soul is the medium the spirit 
uses to express itself. 

It is absolutely impossible for us to conceive what 
Adam was like as God, made him, his very material 
body instinct with spiritual light, his very flesh in 
the likeness of God, his spirit in the image of God, 
and his soul in absolute harmony with God. In the 
personal life of a man who has fallen away from God, 
his soul and his spirit gravitate more and more to 
the dust of the earth, more and more to the brutish 
life on one side and the Satanic life on the other. 
The marvelous hope before us is that in and through 
Jesus Christ, our personality in its three aspects is 
sanctified and preserved in that condition blameless in 
this dispensation, and that in another dispensation 
body, soul and spirit will be all instinct with the glory 
of God, (Whenever an Old Testament character suc- 
ceeded in doing God's will perfectly, earth seemed to 
lose its hold on him, e. g., Enoch, Elijah. Again, why 
did not Jesus Christ go straight back to Heaven from 
the Mount of Transfiguration? He emptied Himself a 
second time of the glory of God and came back again 
for the humiliation of the Cross. Then when Jesus 
Christ comes again, those who are saved and sancti- 
fied will be changed "in the twinkling of an eye," all 
the disharmony will cease and a new order begin.) 



16 Biblical Psychology. 

What does glorification mean? Adam is never 
spoken of as being glorified in the first decades of cre- 
ation. Glorification is Christ enthroned in fulness 
of consummating power, having subdued all things 
unto Himself, and then finally entering back into the 
final being of the original Triune God as "in the 
beginning" before any first creations were. 

In conclusion, God made man in His own image 
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and 
man became, not a living God, but a living soul, a 
soul-enlivened nature, and this whole bodily temple, 
every corpuscle of blood, every nerve, every sinew, 
every muscle was the temple that could manifest an 
exact harmony with God and manifest the image of 
God in the very form of man in perfect faith and love. 
The angels can only manifest the image of God in 
what we call bodiless spirits, there is only one being 
who can manifest God on this earth, and that is 
man. Satan thwarted that purpose, and then laughed 
his devilish laugh against God, but the Bible says that 
God will laugh last. 



CHAPTER III. 

MAN: HIS CREATION, CALLING AND 
COMMUNION. 

MAN'S UNMAKING 

1 THE PEIMAL ANAECHY. Gen. 3; Eom. 5: 12. 

(a) The Serpent. Gen. 3: 1. 

(b) The Serpent and Eve. 2 Cor. 11: 3. 

(c) The Serpent, Eve and Adam. 1 Tim. 2: 14. 
OEIGINAL SIN is— Doing without God. 

( 2 THE PEE-ADAMIC ANAECHY. Ezek. 28: 12-15. 

(a) Satanic Pretensions. Implied, Matt. 4: 8; 2 Cor. 4: 4. 

(b) Satanic Perversions. Gen. 3:5; implied, Job 1: 9. 

(c) Satanic Perils. Jude 6; Matt. 16:23; 2 Thess. 2:9. 
OEIGINATOE OF SIN— Dethroning of God. 

3 THE PUNISHED ANAECHISTS. Gen. 3: 23, 24. 

(a) Destitution and Death. Gen. 2: 17. 

(b) Division from Deity. Gen. 3: 8, 13. * 

(c) Divine Declaration. Gen. 3: 15. 

OEIGIN OF SALVATION— Dating way back to God. 

Now we come to the revelation statement as to how 
sin was introduced into this world. 

1. The Primal Anarchy. 

•(a) The Serpent. (Gen. 3: 1.) This creature was 
evidently a beautiful creation of God, and we must 
beware of imagining that is was in the beginning 
as it was after God's curse. God, after the fall of 
Adam, cursed this beautiful creature into the ser- 
pent, to feed on dust and to crawl; and consequently 

17 



18 Biblical Psychology. 

the serpent in the physical domain is the picture of 
Satan in the spiritual domain. In our universe of 
physical things, we will find many which represent 
spiritual things ; they are, as it were, pictures of them. 
The serpent is the physical picture from man's stand- 
point of what Satan appears in the spiritual domain 
from God's standpoint. However, this line of thought 
properly belongs to Biblical Philosophy, so we will 
only thus allude to it in passing. 

(b) The Serpent and Eve. (2 Cor. 11:3.) Why 
did Satan come via the serpent, and to Eve, why did he 
not go to Adam direct? In talking about man and 
woman as they were first created, it is exceedingly 
difficult to present that subject without getting in- 
troduced to all sorts of small, petty and disrepu- 
table ideas, especially nowadays, relative to the dis- 
tinctions between man and woman. In Adam and 
Eve we are dealing with the primal creations of God. 
Adam was created immediately by the hand of God, 
and Eve was created mediately. Eve stands for the 
soul side, the psychic side, of the human creation, all 
her sympathies and her affinities are with the other 
creations of God around. Adam stands for the spirit 
side, the kingly, Godward side. Adam and Eve are 
together the likeness of God, for God said, "Let us 
make man in our image, male and female created 
He them." Woman stands not as inferior to man; the 
revelation made here is that she stands in quite a dif- 
ferent relation to all things, and both are required to 
make the complete, rounded creation of God referred 



Man, His Unmaking. 19 

to by the big general term MANKIND. Eve having 
affinity and sympathy with the creation round about, 
would naturally listen with very much more un- 
suspecting interest to the suggestions that came 
through the subtle creature that talked to her. The 
Bible says that Eve was deceived; the Bible does 
not say that Adam was deceived ; consequently Adam 
is far more responsible than Eve, for Adam sinned 
deliberately. There was not the remotest conscious 
intention in Eve's heart of disobeying, she was de- 
ceived by the subtle wisdom of Satan via the serpent. 
Adam, however, was not deceived in any shape or 
form; when Eve came to him he understood it 
was disobedience, and he sinned with a deliberate 
understanding of what he was doing, so the Bible 
associates sin with Adam (Rom. 5 : 12) and trans- 
gression with Eve. (1 Tim. 2 : 14.) [In this connection 
it is of importance to note that the Bible reveals that 
our Redeemer entered into the world by the woman. 
Man as man had no part whatever in the redemption 
of the world ; it was "the seed of the woman." In Prot- 
estant theology and in the Protestant outlook we have 
suffered much from our opposition to the Roman Cath- 
olic Church on one point, viz.: our intense antipathy 
to Mariolatry, and we have lost the whole meaning of 
the woman side of the revelation of God. All that we 
understand by womanhood and by manhood, all we un- 
derstand by fatherhood and motherhood is embraced in 
the term "El Shaddai." (Gen. 17:1.) This is a 
mere hint at a line of thought we cannot take up here.] 
Perhaps one may legitimately make a distinction be- 



20 Biblical Psychology. 

tween transgression and sin in human conduct. (See 
Matt. 6: 12-15.) Transgression is nearly always an un- 
conscious act, there is no conscious determination to do 
wrong. Sin is never an unconscious act, as far as 
culpability is concerned, it is always a conscious deter- 
mination. Adam was the introducer of sin into this 
order of things. Original sin is doing without God. 
A noticeable feature in the conduct of Adam and Eve 
is that when God turned them out of the Garden 
they did not rebel. The characteristic of sin in man 
is "fear and shame.' ' Sin in man is doing without 
God, but it is not rebellion against God in its first 
stages, there is no rebellion anywhere in Adam and 
Eve against God. 

2. The Pre-Adainic Anarchy. 

(a) Satanic Pretensions. The pretensions of 
Satan are very clear. He is the "god of this 
world/ ' and he will not allow any relationship 
to the true God. Satan's attitude of pretence is the 
same as the attitude of a pretender to a throne — he 
claims it as his right. "Wherever and whenever the 
rule of God is established and recognized as such 
by man, Satan at once proceeds to instil the tendency 
of mutiny and rebellion and lawlessness. 

(b) Satanic Perversions. Satan ever perverts what 
God says. Genesis 3 : 5 is one of the revelation facts 
concerning Satan. Remember the characteristics of 
union with God are faith in God and personal, passion- 
ate devotion and love for God. The first thing Satan 
aims at in Adam and Eve is that, by perverting what 



Man, His Unmaking. 21 

God says. (In Job 1:9 Satan goes the length of try- 
ing to pervert God's idea of man. There is an amazing 
revelation of power in Satan! He is represented as 
presenting himself with the "sons of God" in the very 
presence of God and trying to pervert God's mind 
about man. You may apply personally not exegetieally 
such a statement as the following in Isaiah: "He will 
not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised 
reed." Satan is also called the "accuser of the breth- 
ren." He not only accuses and slanders God to us, but 
he accuses us to God, and it is as if he looks down and 
points out a handful of people and insinuates to God, 
"Now; that woman is a perfect disgrace to you, she has 
only one spark of grace amongst all the fibres of her 
life, I advise you to stamp out that spark. ' ' What is the 
revelation? "He will raise it to a flame." Or, Satan 
points out a man and says, "That man is a disgrace 
to you, he is a c bruised reed/ I wonder you build any 
hope whatever on him, he is a hindrance and an upset 
to you, break him!" But no, the Lord will bind him 
up and make him into a wonderful instrument. The 
old reeds were used as wonderful musical instruments, 
and instead of crushing out the life that is bruised and 
wrong, He will heal it and discourse sweet music 
through it.) 

In the Genesis revelation Satan says that God is 
jealous — "God knows if you disobey Him, you will 
beootne like God." He perverted God's statement, 
he did not say that God had said it. Satan is 
too wise for that, he said, "Has God said it?" insin- 



22 Biblical Psychology. 

uating, "You do not know what He meant, but I do; 
He meant that if you eat of that tree and disobey 
Him, you will become like He is." I do not think 
that Eve accepted that statement about God, because 
when you watch, it worked as a deception, uncon- 
sciously, and what she saw was that it was remarkably 
delightful to take that fruit; but the discerning and 
understanding of it is given us by God. No wonder 
Paul says, and the Spirit says through the Epistles, 
that we are not "ignorant of the devices of Satan.' ' 
Eemember, Satan's pretension is that he is equal with 
God. His perversion is twofold: he perverts what 
God says to us, and tries to pervert God's mind about 
us. 

(c) Satanic Perils. What are the Satanic perils? 
In Matthew 16 : 23 we come to the location where we live. 
The perils spring straight out of the way we are made. 
Have you ever noticed the remarkable identification 
Jesus Christ makes in that passage ? What is it Peter 
had said? "Pity Thyself, Lord." "Get thee behind 
Me, Satan." Then He tells Peter that he is saying 
the thing that belongs to the wrong disposition of 
man which is identified with Satan. Beware of Satanic 
perils where you take them to be natural tendencies. 
Remember Satan is an awful being, he is able to 
deceive us on the right hand and on the left, and the 
first beginnings of his deceptions are along the line of 
self-pity. Self-pity, self-conceit and self-sympathy 
will make us accept slanders against God. Satan's 
perils arise out of the wrong disposition that Adam in- 
troduced us to, and that wrong dispositon shows itself 



Man, His Unmaking. 23 

in self-pity and self-sympathy. (Beware of slandering 
the "old man/' as is very often done. I mean, making 
the "old man" appear ugly. The "old man" does not 
appear ugly to anybody but the Holy Ghost. The "old 
man," i. e., this disposition that connects me with the 
mystical "body of sin," is the most highly desirable 
thing on earth to me till I am quickened by the Spirit 
of God and born from above. It makes me consider 
"my rights"; it makes me look after myself and con- 
sider what is good for me.) 

Then another peril. (2 Thess. 2: 9.) That means that 
there are tremendous and appalling external mani- 
festations of Satan, and the curious thing is that now- 
adays people are paying much more attention, and 
watching out more eagerly for these great manifesta- 
tions of Satanic power while they allow the other 
Satanic peril to have its way. Spiritualism is child's 
play compared to this other thing. Once you get 
the disposition altered, you will never be deluded by 
any of the Satanic powers that manifest themselves in 
spiritualisms in the external world. The peril is the 
inside peril which men never think of as a peril. "My 
right to myself," my "self-pity," my "self-conceit," 
my "consideration for my progress," my "ways of 
looking at things," that is the Satanic peril in me that 
will keep me in perfect sympathy with Satan's ideas. 

Satanic anarchy is conscious and determined op- 
position to God. Wherever there is a law of God, 
Satan will break it. Wherever God's rule is, Satan 
will put himself alongside and oppose it. As we 
said in the last chapter, Satan's sin is at the summit of 



24 Biblical Psychology. 

all sins ; man 's sin is at the foundation of all sins, and 
between them there is all the difference in the world. 
Satan's sin is conscious, emphatic, and immortal re- 
bellion against God. He has no fear, no veneration, 
and no respect for God's rule. "Whenever God's law 
is stated, that is sufficient, Satan will break it, and 
his whole purpose through the disposition of sin in 
you and me is to get us to the same place. The an- 
archy in Satan is, then, a conscious, tremendous thing. 
Satan in the Bible is never represented as being guilty 
of "sins," never represented as being guilty of doing 
wrong things. He is a wrong being. Men are re- 
sponsible for doing wrong things, and they do wrong 
things because of the wrong disposition that is in 
them, and sometimes you will find that the moral cun- 
ning of your own nature makes you blame Satan, when 
you know perfectly well you ought to blame your- 
self. The true blame for sins lies in the wrong dis- 
position in you and me, and I think it right to say 
that Satan in all probability is as much upset as the 
Holy Ghost, when men go into external sins, but from 
a different reason. When men go into external sins 
and upset their lives Satan knows perefectly well 
that they will want another ruler — a Savior, a De- 
liverer — but as long as he can keep us in peace and 
unity and harmony apart from God, he will do it. 
Remember, then, that Satan's sin is dethroning God. 

3. The Punished Anarchists. 

We found in a previous chapter how God pun- 
ished Satan. He has reserved for him what is 



Man, His Unmaking. 25 

revealed as the eternal Hell. Now we come to the 
punishment of Adam and Eve. (Gen. 3:23, 24.) 
This is an old familiar revelation fact to us, 
but if we get the truth of it we see that there is no 
rebellion in Adam and Eve. They did not fight against 
God, they simply went out covered with fear and 
shame. Satan was the originator of sin; Adam was 
not. Adam accepted the way his wife had been de- 
ceived and sinned with his eyes open, and instantly 
•an extraordinary thing happened: "They knew they 
were -naked. ' ' The more you meditate on the verse, 
the more will you find in it, and there is quite suffi- 
cient to indicate this — that when Adam's spirit, soul 
and body were in perfect faith and love to God, 
united to God, his soul was the medium which 
brought down the marvelous life of the Spirit of 
God, the very image of God, into his material body 
and clothed it in inconceivable splendor of light, 
until the whole man was the likeness of God. In- 
stantly he disobeyed, that went, the connection with 
God was shut off, and spirit, soul and body tumbled 
into death that instant. The question of dissolving 
Into earth in a few years time, is nothing more than 
death visible. Do not bring in the idea of time at 
all, death happened instantly in spirit, soul and body 
— spiritually and psychically. He tumbled into ruin 
because the connecting link with Deity was gone, and 
his spirit, soul and body tumbled into disintegrating 
death, and when Adam and Eve heard of the "goings 
of God in the Garden," they were both terrified and hid. 
By the great term Dearth, the body crumbles back again 



26 Biblical Psychology. 

into the dust, the soul disappears, and the "spirit goes 
back to God who gave it." "What does this latter 
statement mean? That the spirit is the immortal part 
of every man, and that the spirit goes straight back 
to God who gave it, it is not absorbed into God. The 
spirit of man goes back with the characteristics that 
he has made on it, for judgment or for praise from 
God. It goes back to God who breathed into man's 
nostrils the breath of life. 

God turned man out of the Garden of Eden into 
destitution. By turning man out, He put him on the 
way to become an infinitely grander and nobler being 
than even Adam was in the first place. He put hira 
out into destitution, and through the very worst on- 
slaught of Satan, He made a better creature than the 
first Adam was. It seems to me that the whole Bible 
from Genesis to Revelation instead of being a picture 
of despair is the very opposite. The " worst" is al- 
ways bettered by God. Let Satan do his worst; God 
has "staked" His all on the new creation. He took 
His hand off, as it were, and let Satan do the very 
worst that diabolical spiritual genius could do, and 
Satan did it. Satan knew exactly what would happen 
to man, viz.: that God would have to punish him, 
and God did punish him, with a perfect certainty 
that the being that was going to come out of 
the ordeal of the fall was going to be greater than 
the Adam He first made. Adam and Eve went from 
the Garden covered with fear and shame. What are 
the characteristics of the old disposition in the New 



Man, His Unmaking. 27 

Testament? "Fearfulness and unbelief." What does 
God's atonement do? It takes away ' tearfulness and 
unbelief" and gets us back again into ' 'faith and 
love" to God. What does regeneration mean? The 
Holy Spirit lifting man straight back again out of 
the slough he has got into by death and sin, into a 
totally new realm, and by sudden intuitions and im- 
pulses that new life is able to lift soul and body up 
for a time. If that soul will not obey the new union 
with God which the Spirit life has given, it will ulti- 
mately fall away from the new birth God has given it. 
The new birth God has given it is to get it to a place 
where soul and body will be identified with Christ, until 
spirit and soul and body are sanctified here and now, 
and preserved in that condition not now by intuitions, 
not by sudden impulses and marvellous workings of the 
new life within it, but by a certain, conscious, superior, 
moral integrity, transfigured through and through by 
the union made by the Spirit with God through the 
atonement of Jesus Christ. When Adam sinned, that 
cut off his union with God, and God turned him out 
and kept the way open to the tree of life, i. e., pre- 
vented Adam getting back as a fallen being; if Adam 
had gotten back as a fallen being he would have 
become an incarnate devil, and the devil would have 
thwarted God finally with man; but God guarded the 
way to the tree of life in turning Adam out. If 
Adam had been a, rebellious devil, there would have 
been the same havoc on this earth that there was when 
the angels fell, but Adam did not sin like Satan. 



28 Biblical Psychology. 

Adam was covered with fear and shame, and the light 
referred to just now that glistered all through man's 
physical body, faded out by sin ; but Christ will change 
this "body of humiliation' ' and make it like His glo- 
rious body, and it will result not only in an intui- 
tive innocency, but in a conscious manly and womanly 
holiness. Holiness is tested innocence, holiness is 
really the outcome of the new disposition God has 
given us maintained against every odd. It is militant, 
Satan is continually pressing and ardent, but it main- 
tains itself. It is morality on fire and transfigured 
into the likeness of God. Holiness is not only what 
God gives me, but what I manifest that God has given 
me. I manifest by my reaction against sin, the 
world, and the devil, this corruscating holiness. 
"Whenever God's saints are about in the world 
they are protected by a "wall of fire," they do not 
see it, but Satan does. "That wicked one toucheth 
him not." Satan has to ask and plead for permis- 
sion; as to whether God grants him permission, 
has to do with the sovereignty of God, and is not in 
our domain to understand. All we know is that Je- 
sus Christ taught us to pray, "Lead us not into tempta- 
tion." 

Man was turned into destitution, and thus he was 
divided from Deity. God disappeared from him, and 
he disappeared from God. As we mentioned before, 
there are three false unities possible in man's ex- 
perience, viz.: sensuality, drunkenness, and the devil, 
whereby man's spirit, soul and body are brought back 



Man, His Unmaking. 29 

again into harmony, quite peaceful, quite happy, no 
sense of death about him. A drunken man has no 
self-consciousness, he is perfectly delivered from all 
things which disintegrate and upset. Sensuality and 
Satan do the same thing, but each of them only for 
a time. "When Satan rules, men's souls are in peace, 
they are not troubled like other men, not upset, but 
happy and peaceful. But there is only one right 
at-one-ment, and that is in Jesus Christ. There is only 
one right unity, and that is when body, soul and spirit 
are united by God the Holy Ghost through the mar- 
velous atonement of Jesus Christ. 

The origin of salvation is a daring way back to 
God. How did Jesus Christ work a way back to God? 
Through every worst piece of Satan's work. The 
statement in God's Book is that Jesus Christ, by the 
sheer force of the tremendous integrity of His in- 
carnation, hewed a way straight through sin and death 
and Hell right back to God ; more than conqueror over 
all. 



CHAPTER IV. 

MAN: HIS CREATION, CALLING AND 
COMMUNION. 

READJUSTMENT BY REDEMPTION 



1 INCAENATION. Word Made Weak. John 1: 14. 
God-Man. 

(a) Self -Surrender of Trinity. John 17: 5; Mark 13: 32; 
Eph. 4: 10. 

(b) Self -same with Trinity. Matt. 11:27; John 14:9. 

(c) Self-sufficiency of Trinity. Prov. 8: 22-32. 

2 IDENTIFICATION. Son Made Sin. 2 Cor. 5: 20, 21. 
God and Man. 

(a) Diay of His Death. Matt. 16: 21; Mark 9: 31; Eom. 
6: 3. 

(b) Day of His Eesurrection. Eom. 6: 5; Phil. 3: 10. 

(c) Day of His Ascension. Matt. 28: 18; 2 Cor. 5: 16. 

3 INVASION. Sinner Made Saint. Gal. 2: 20. 
God in Man. 

(a) The New Man. 2 Cor. 5: 17. 

(b) The New Manners. Eph. 5 : 22-32. 

(c) The New Mankind. Eph. 4: 13; 2 Pet. 3: 13. 

1. Incarnation. 

"Trinity" is not a Bible word. The Triune God 
is revealed over and over again in. the Bible, and the 
idea conveyed by the Trinity is a thoroughly Script- 
ural one. The following distinctions have existed from 
all eternity: 

30 



Man, His Readjustment. 31 

The Essence of Godhead (esse) usually known as 
God the Father; 

The Existence of Godhead (existere) usually known 
as God the Son; 

The Proceeding of Godhead (procedere) usually 
known as God the Holy Ghost. 

One of the things we have to guard against is 
the teaching that God became incarnate to realize 
Himself. That statement is unbiblical. God was self- 
sufficient before the Son became incarnate. The whole 
basis and kernel of what is known as New Theology 
is based on that one fundamental error — that God had 
to create something in order to realize Himself; and 
consequently we are told that we are absolutely essen- 
tial to God's existence, that apart from us God is not. 
Once starting with that theory, all that is known as 
New Theology is as easy as A. B. C. The Bible has noth- 
ing to do with any such conception. The creation and 
the incarnation are the outcomes of the overflowing life 
of the Godhead. Immediately you start with "God is 
all, " you get another aspect of New Theology. The Bible 
reveals that God is not all. The Bible distinctly states 
that our universe is a pluralistic one, not a monistic 
one ; that means that other forces are at work besides 
one, such as man and Satan. These are not God, 
and never will be. Man is meant to come back to 
God and to be in harmony with Him through Jesus 
Christ ; Satan will forever be at enmity with God. 

In Philippians 2: 6 the "form" of God is mentioned. 
What is the form of God? We touched on this point 
in dealing with the first subject. We found that men 



32 Biblical Psychology. 

had reasoned that because the Bible said man was 
made in the image of God, therefore God had a body. 
We proved that it was not a "corporeal form," and 
that whenever God is mentioned as having human 
members, the Incarnation is referred to. The term 
"glory" when referred to the Godhead conveys the 
idea of "form." The Bible has revealed that the 
Godhead was absolutely self-sufficient. God did not 
need to be incarnated to satisfy Himself, nor was the 
creation needed. The Godhead had a form originally, 
and the reference* to the "form" of the Godhead may 
be best implied in the term, ' ' glory. ' ' 

Jesus Christ is not a Being one-half God and the 
other half man. That was the line on which George 
Eliot made shipwreck of her faith. She translated 
Strauss' life of Jesus Christ, and this impossibility to 
human reason was represented to her mind by him. 
The Bible reveals that Jesus Christ is God-man, viz.: 
God incarnate, the Godhead existing in flesh and 
blood. The Incarnation is part of (a) the Self -surrender 
of the Trinity. John 17 : 5 refers to this. Jesus Christ 
was not a being who became divine, He was the God- 
head incarnated, the "Word became weak, and Jesus 
Christ emphatically alludes to His own limitations. St. 
Paul says that "He emptied Himself of His glory," 
i. e., He emptied Himself of the "form" of Deity and 
came right down here as a weak human being and 
took upon Himself "the likeness of sinful flesh." 

Again in Mark 13 : 32 we get another indication 
of His limitations. I am aware of the danger of at- 



Man, His Readjustment. 33 

tempting to sketch out the self-consciousness of Jesus. 
We cannot do it; we must remember what the Script- 
ures say about Him, that He was the Godhead in- 
carnate, and that He emptied Himself of His glory 
in becoming incarnate. It was not God the Son pay- 
ing a price to God the Father ; it was God the Father, 
God the Son and God the Holy Ghost surrendering 
this marvelous being who became the Lord Jesus 
Christ, for one definite purpose. Never separate the 
Incarnation from the Atonement. The Incarnation is 
for the sake of the Atonement. In dealing with the 
Incarnation, we are dealing with a revelation fact, 
not with a speculation. Another allusion to the limita- 
tion by incarnation is in Hebrews where the writer 
is referring to Christ's temptation. To say that Christ 
was not tempted, flatly contradicts the Word of God, 
the Bible says He "was tempted in all points like as 
we are, yet without sin." 

(b) Self-same with Trinity. (Matt. 11 : 27.) This 
verse implies that Jesus says, in effect, " I am the only 
organ for revealing the Godhead; you cannot know 
God through nature, or through the love of your 
friends, you cannot know God any other way than 
through Me." Will you couple with that John 14: 9? 
There again is the same statement made clear that no 
one knows anything about Deity in the way of revela- 
tion unless he accepts that revelation as Jesus Christ. 
Such statements come over and over again in our 
Lord's teaching, and you will find the more you ex- 



34 Biblical Psychology. 

amine His teaching that He makes the final destiny 
of man depend on his relationship to Him. 

(c) The Self-sufficiency of the Trinity. (Prov. 8 : 22- 
32.) That passage is amazing in the light of the In- 
carnation. The writer is referring to what he calls 
11 wisdom," and if you connect wisdom with the first 
chapter of John, you will find the very same idea 
used. The word there is " Logos." The w;ord Logos 
means God 's Word expressing His thought. The Trin- 
ity was self-sufficient; the Incarnation was not meant 
to satisfy God, but for another purpose altogether. In- 
stead of man and Jesus Christ being necessary to com- 
plement God so that He might realize Himself, the 
thought is exactly the opposite, viz.: that man might 
realize God and regain adjustment to Him. The whole 
purpose of the Incarnation is redemption, and to pro- 
duce a being more noble than the original Adam by 
overcoming the disasters of the fall and curse. At 
the climax of everything the Son resumes the original 
position of the Trinity, the Trinity thus resolving it- 
self into this absolute self-sufficient Deity again. The 
Son gives all up to the Father. These statements refer 
to the resumption of the Trinity to the original posi- 
tion of the Godhead. 

2. Identification. Son made Sin. (2 Cor. 5:20, 
21.) 

This is an indication of why God became incarnate, 
why the "Word was made weak, why the Logos became 
possessed of a weak human frame. It was that the 
Son might be identified with sin. Remember the 



Man, His Readjustment. 35 

teaching here is not that Jesus Christ was punished 
for our sins, that is another and slighter aspect than 
the one we are dealing with. The statement here is 
astounding : that He was made sin for us. Jesus Christ 
became identified not only with the disposition of 
sin, but with the very "body of sin." He had not the 
disposition of sin, and He had. no connection with 
the body of sin in Himself; but He became identified 
with sin, "Him who knew no sin He made to be sin. ,, 
Language can hardly bear the strain, but it may 
nevertheless convey the thought that Jesus Christ 
went straight through identification with sin, so that 
every man and woman on earth may be freed 
from sin by His atonement. He went through the 
depths of damnation, through the deepest clepths of 
death, and Hell, and came out more than con- 
queror ; and consequently everyone of us who is willing 
to be identified with our Lord will find that he or 
she is freed from the disposition of sin, freed from 
their connection with the body of sin, and they can 
come out more than conqueror because of what the 
Lord Jesus Christ has done. 

(a) The Day of His Death. I mean by "Day" 
the period of time covered by His life on earth. 
"Why did He come and live thirty years in Nazareth ? 
"Why was He born as the babe of poor people in such 
a condition that the mig.htiest empires of the world 
could simply not be able to detect His existence? "Why 
did He live three years of popularity, scandal and 
hatred, and why did He say, "I came here to be 
killed"? '(Our Lord never presents His life as the 



36 Biblical Psychology. 

life of a martyr. He said, "I have power to lay 
down my life, and I have power to take it again.' ' 
"I lay down my life because of the great purpose 
behind in the mind of God.") The only way you can 
explain Jesus Christ is the way He explains Himself, 
(and He never explains Himself away). Why did He 
live and die? The Scriptures reveal that He lived 
and died and rose again that we might be readjusted 
to the Godhead, that we might be brought back into 
favor and love, and be delivered from sin. To teach 
that the Lord Jesus Christ cannot deliver from sin 
may end in nothing short of blasphemy. Present 
that line of thought before God, tell Him that the 
atonement cannot deliver us from sin, it can only give 
us a divine anticipation; and the danger and unscrip- 
turalness of it will soon appear. The Book reveals that 
He became indentified with sin that we might be "made 
the righteousness of God in Him." Forgiveness is the 
least outcome from God's standpoint; from my stand- 
point it is a tremendous thing, but that is not the whole 
meaning of the experimental part of that wonderful 
life to me. I have to get where I can be identified 
with the Lord Jesus Christ, where I know that my 
connection with the body of sin is severed, where I 
am "made the righteousness of God in Him," where 
I am readjusted to God, and free in this life to fulfill 
the commands of the Lord. 

(b) The Day of His Resurrection. By the resur- 
rection of the Lord Jesus Christ, He has power 
to impart to you and to me the Holy Spirit, which 
means a totally new life. The Holy Ghost is 



Man, His Readjustment. 37 

the Deity in proceeding power who applies the 
atonement of the Son of God to my experience. Je- 
sus Christ laid all His emphasis on the Holy Spirit — 
"He will lead you into all truth;" "He will bring 
to your remembrance what I have said;" "He will not 
only be with you, He will be in you." We hear on 
the right hand and on the left that this is the age of 
the Holy Spirit. Thank God it is, and the Holy Spirit 
is with all men that we might receive Him. But 
God the Father was rejected and spurned in the Old 
Testament dispensation; Jesus Christ the Son was de- 
spised and spurned in His dispensation (He was flat- 
tered too) ; and God the Holy Ghost is despised, as 
well as flattered, in this dispensation. He is not given 
His right. "We praise Him and talk about Him and 
say we rely on His power, but the question of receiv- 
ing Him in that He might make real in my life what 
Jesus Christ did for me, is too rare an experience now- 
adays to be formidable. Immediately the Holy Spirit 
does come in as light and as life, He will chase through 
every avenue of your mind, and His light will pen- 
etrate every recess of your heart; He will chase His 
light through every affection of your body and make 
you know what sin is. The Holy Spirit "convicts of 
sin," man does not. By His resurrection our Lord 
Jesus Christ can impart Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is 
that marvelous Spirit that kept our Lord while He was 
incarnate, spirit, soul and body in perfect harmony 
with absolute Deity, and Jesus said, "You have not that 
life in yourself," and you cannot have it unless you get 



38 Biblical Psychology. 

it through Him. "He that believeth on Him hath 
everlasting life," this is the life He is referring to — 
Holy Spirit life which will take your spirit, soul and 
body and bring them back into communion with 
God, where if you will obey the light the Holy Spirit 
gives, He will lead you into this amazing identifica- 
tion with the death of the Lord Jesus in a deeper 
sense, viz.: until you know experimentally that your 
old disposition, your right to your self, is crucified with 
Him, and that your human nature is free to obey the 
commands of God. (The word "substitution" is never 
used in the Bible, but the idea is Scriptural. Sub- 
stitution is always two-fold, not only Christ identified 
with my sin, but I am identified with Christ so that 
the ruling disposition of Jesus may be put in me. 
Sin on -the one side and righteousness on the other. 
The righteousness there means the ruling disposition 
of the Lord Jesus Christ.) 

•(c) In the Day of His Ascension our Lord Jesus 
Christ became omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. 
That means this — all that He was in Himself in the day 
of His flesh, all that He was able to impart in the day 
of His resurrection, He now is almighty to bestow 
without measure on all obedient children of men. He 
makes us one in holiness with Himself, one in love 
with Himself, and ultimately one in glory with Him- 
self. He is the supreme Sovereign, and He is able 
to give unto His people a supreme sovereignty. In the 
days of our flesh as saints, He says, "Lo, I am with 
you all the days, even unto the end." He is with us 
in all wisdom, guiding, directing, controlling and sub- 



Man, His Readjustment. ^9 

duing, and He is with us in all power. He is King 
of kings and Lord of lords from the day of His ascen- 
sion until now. 

3. Invasion. Sinner Made Saint. (Gal. 2 : 20.) 
By Jesus Christ being identified with sin, I can 
get back again into perfect harmony with God. 
God does not remove our responsibility; He puts a 
new responsibility on us. We are sons and daugh- 
ters of God by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and 
we have a tremendous dignity to maintain, and we 
have no ^business to bow our necks to any yoke but 
the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. There ought to 
be in us, the scorn of a holy meekness when- 
ever it comes to being dictated to by the dis- 
pensation we live in. The dispensation we live 
in is governed by the ''prince of this world," who 
hates Jesus Christ. His great doctrine is self-realiza- 
tion; while Christ's great doctrine is Christ-realiza- 
tion. We ought to be free from the yoke of the 
11 prince of this world," only one yoke should be on 
our shoulders — the yoke of the Lord Jesus. He was 
meek towards all His Father did to and for Him, He 
let God Almighty do what He liked with His life and 
never murmured. He never brought sympathy down 
to Himself, and never awakened self-pity. 

Galatians 2 : 20 is the Scriptural expression of 
identification with the Lord Jesus Christ in such 
a way that my whole life is changed. My old 
destiny was getting wonderfully like the destiny 
of Satan — self-realization; now Paul say's it is no 



40 Biblical Psychology. 

longer that destiny for me, it is Christ-identity in 
me. "The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the 
faith which is in the Son of God." The very faith 
that governed Jesus Christ now governs me. He is 
not talking about the elementary faith in Jesus,, 
but the very faith that was in Jesus. Paul says 
also, "Let this mind be in you which was also 
in Christ Jesus." There is only one kind of holiness, 
and that is the holiness of the Lord Jesus; only 
one kind of human nature, and that is the human 
nature of us all, and Jesus Christ by His iden- 
tification can give me exactly the same disposition He 
had, and I have to habitually see that I work it out 
through my eyes, and ears, and mouth, and all the 
organs of my body and life in every detail. Paul had 
been identified with the death of Jesus Christ, and 
his whole life was invaded by a, new spirit. His 
connection was with a totally new realm, the mystical 
body of Christ. He had been baptized by one spirit 
into one body, and had no connection now with the 
body of sin. The body of sin is that mystical body 
which ultimately ends with Satan. The mystical body 
of Christ is ours by sanctification, we are made part 
and parcel of it. The term " invasion' ' is used be- 
cause it gives the idea better than that of marriage. 
Our Lord's description in John 15 of the vine and 
the branches is a much more satisfactory one in every 
way than the marriage relationship. The picture from 
the vine and the branches is that every bit of life 
in the branch that is bearing fruit is from an 



Man, His Readjustment. 41 

invasion by the parent stem; and so with us, the 
whole life is drawn from the Lord Jesus, not only 
the spring and the motive of it, but the actual think- 
ing and living and doing. That is the Apostle Paul's 
meaning when he talks about the "new man in Christ 
Jesus." After identification and sanctification, that 
is where the life is drawn from, "all my fountains are 
in Thee." And have you noticed that God will wither 
up every other spring you have? He will wither up 
your natural virtues, He will break up confidence in 
your own power, and He will wither up your confi- 
dence in every respect, in brain, in spirit and in heart 
and body, until you learn by practical experience that 
you have no right to draw your life from anything 
else than the tremendous reservoir of the resurrection 
life of Jesus Christ. Thank God if you are going 
through a drying-up experience! 

Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He 
replaces the whole man on the inside, until the new 
man can shew himself in the new manners. God does 
not give new manners, we make our own ; but we have 
to make them out of the new life. (Eph. 4:22-32.) 
Every detail of your physical life is to be abso- 
lutely under the control of the new disposition 
that God Almighty has planted in you through 
identification with the Lord Jesus, and you will no 
longer be allowed to murmur "can't." There is no. 
such a word in the Christian's vocabulary when 
rightly related to God. There is only one word, and 
that is "I can." Paul says in Philippians, "I can do 



42 Biblical Psychology. 

all things through Christ which strengthened me," 
and watch the kind of things he could do, "I know 
how to be abased; I know how to be exalted; I know 
how to be empty; I know how to be full." 

The manners refer to Christian character, and we 
are responsible for that. God works the altera- 
tion on the inside, and now Paul says, "Work 
out what God works in," and you will find that God 
will use the machinery of your circumstances when 
you are right with Him. He is not after satisfying 
you and glorifying you. He is after manifesting in 
your edition what His Son can do. Paul says that 
Jesus is going to be "admired in them that believe." 
This invasion of the life of Jesus Christ makes us 
sons and daughters of God. These are things that 
the angels desire to look into. It is as if they looked 
down on us and said of that woman, "How won- 
derfully like Jesus Christ she is, she did not use to 
be like that, but look at her now. "We know Jesus 
Christ did it, but we wonder how?" Or, "Look at 
that man, he is just like his Master, how did Jesus 
Christ do it?" 

Thank God we are not going to be angels, we are 
going to be something tenfold better. By the full re- 
demption of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a time 
coming when our bodies will be in the image of God. 
The bodies of our humiliation are to be changed to 
"glorified bodies," and they are to bear the image of 
God just like our spirits. 



CHAPTER V. 

SOUL: THE ESSENCE, EXISTENCE, 
AND EXPRESSION. 

1 THE TEEM SOUL. (Generally.) 

(a) Applied to Men and Animals. Gen. 1: 20, 21, 24, 30. 

(b) Applied to Men, not Animals. Gen. 2: 7; 1 Cor. 
15: 45. 

(c) Applied to Men Individually. Gen. 12: 13; 1 Sam. 
18: 1. 

N. B. — (1) Never applied to angels or to God. (Comp. 2 
Cor. 4: 7.) 
(2) Never applied to plants. (See Job 14: 8, etc.) 

2 THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SOUL. (Specifically.) 

(a) And Spirit. Gen. 2: 7. 

(b) And Body. Jas. 2: 26. 

(c) And Personality. Isa. 29:24; Rom. 8:16. 

N. B. — "The Spirit is the essential foundation of man; the 
soul his peculiar essential form; the body his es- 
sential manifestation. ' ' 

We take first of all the soul as a term generally 
and then specifically. The next chapter will be 
"The Fundamental Powers' ' of the soul, which means 
the soul as it is influenced either by a degenerate 
intelligence, or by the Spirit of God, and we will 
deal also with the varied powers of the soul. Then 
"The Fleshly Presentation of the Soul" will be con- 
sidered, that means as the soul manifests itself and 
expresses itself in the bodily life; and finally we take 
the "Past, Present and Future" of the soul, in which 

43 



44 Soul: The Essence, 

we deal with all the theses that have gathered round 
the doctrines of the soul, and are somewhat scriptural, 
but yet lead to conclusions most unscriptural. 

The word "sour' in the Old Testament is men- 
tioned about 460 times, meaning is "animal soul," 
and by animal soul, the soul that is present only 
in this order of beings. In the New Testament the 
word for soul is mentioned about fifty-seven times, with 
th same meaning. When the Bible mentions a thing 
over five hundred times it is quite time that Christians 
examined the teaching about it with care. 

1. The Term Soul. (Generally.) 

"We will take the term "soul" generally, used in 
three distinct ways. First, the term as applied to 
men and animals alike as distinct from all other crea- 
tions; then the more particular use of the word as 
applied to men distinguished from animals; and then 
the third use of the term as applied to distinguish 
one man from another. 

<a) (Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 30.) The term "soul" here 
includes animals and men to distinguish them from 
every other form of creation. 

(The Bible nowhere says that either angels or 
God have souls. Angels are never spoken of as 
having souls, because soul refers entirely to this 
order of creation, and angels belong to another order. 
The only way in which the soul of God is referred 
to is prophetically, in anticipation of the Incarnation. 
Our Lord emphatically had a soul, but of God and 
angels the term "soul" is not used.) 



Existence, and Expression. 45 

Then another thing, soul is never applied to plants. 
Although a plant has life, the Bible never speaks of 
it as having soul. 

"For there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, 
that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch 
thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax 
old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the 
ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, 
and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth 
and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost and 
where is he?" (Job 14:7-10.) 

The distinction there is very clear; you can cut 
a piece from a plant and the "cut off" part will grow 
again; you can cut off a limb of an animal and plant 
it, but it will not grow, or you may cut off "your 
arm and that will not grow. The reason is that the 
plant has no soul, and the animal has. There is noth- 
ing said in the Bible about the immortality of an 
animal. The Bible does say that in the regenerated 
earth there will be animals, but the Bible nowhere 
says that these animals we see now are immortal and 
animal. The Bible does say that in the new earth there 
will be animals, but the Bible nowhere says that these 
animals we see now are immortal and when they (lie are 
raised again. "What is indicated is that the spirit of en- 
tire nature will be restored by God's mighty redemp- 
tion, that everything that has been partaker of the 
curse through the fall will be restored by Jesus Christ 
through cremation and various ways; nothing will be 



46 Soul: The Essence, 

lost; but nowhere does the Bible teach the immor- 
tality of animals. 

(b) The term "soul" applied to men and not 
animals. 

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of 
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life, and man became a living soul." (Gen. 2:7.) 

"And so it is written, The first man Adam was 
made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quick- 
ening spirit." (1 Cor. 15:45.) 

Now what is the soul? Something that is peculiar 
to men and animals, that angels do not have, that God 
has not, and that plants have not. Soul is the holder 
of spirit and body together. Man has soul, and brute 
has soul. What kind of spirit has a brute? If the 
soul is the holder of spirit and body together, then 
there must be a spirit in the brute, otherwise our state- 
ment about soul is wrong. There is certainly a spirit 
in the brute, and the Bible reveals that when the soul 
of an animal dies, its spirit "goeth down." The spirit 
of the brute is the spirit of entire nature, and when 
the brute dies that spirit goes back again into entire 
nature. What is the spirit of entire nature? A man- 
ifest creation of God. Now the spirit in man that 
holds soul together with his body is something entirely 
different from the spirit of a brute; it is the human 
spirit which God created when He breathed into man's 
nostrils the breath of life. God did not make man a 
little God, He breathed into his nostrils the spirit 
which became in man, man's distinct spirit. 



Existence, and Expression. 47 

Where does man's spirit go when he dies? "The 
spirit of the brute goeth downward, and the spirit of 
a man goeth upward." A number df secularists 
have told us that death is a beautiful "molecular dis- 
turbance," and that when we die we are distributed 
like the animal life into the gases and spirit of 
entire nature. The Bible does not say so, the Bible 
says that the spirit of a man goes back to God. That 
does not imply that man's spirit is absorbed back 
into God; it is the spirit goes back to Goci with all 
the characteristics for judgment or for praise. When 
we deal more narrowly with this subject later on, we 
shall find that the whole nature of a man's spirit, 
whether it be "sensual" or "spiritual," is to make 
itself expressed in soul. The whole effort is to try and 
express the spirit through the soul; that is, express it 
in what we understand as our ordinary physical life. 

(c) The term "soul" applied to men individually. 

"Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may 
be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall 
live because of thee." (Gen. 12:13.) 

"And it came to pass when he had made an end 
of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan waa 
knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him 
as his own soul." (1 Sam. 18:1.) 

These passages refer to the use of the term "soul," 
to the individual personal soul as distinct from every 
other soul. In popular language we speak of a person 
expressing "soul" in music, or literature, or art; or 
else we refer to him as being hard and mechanical 



48 Soul : The Essence, 

and "soulless." It is this aspect of soul we are refer- 
ring to. An individual soul cannot be divided or cut 
up. "When in the Scripture "demon possession" is 
referred to (see Luke 8:26 to 39) it is the body that 
is the location or habitation of the many other spirits 
besides the man's own soul. (Thought takes up no 
room, and soul partakes of the nature of thought, so 
that there is, literally speaking, no limit to the number 
of spirits a man's body m<ay hold during demon pos- 
session. ) The phrase ' ' beautiful soul ' ' or " mean soul ' ' 
refers to this individual aspect of soul. 

2. The Truth About the Soul. (Specifically.) 

(a) What is the relationship between spirit and 
soul : where did the soul come from ? Soul has no exist- 
ence until spirit and body come together. It holds its ex- 
istence in fee entirely by spirit, which statement is 
the needed opposite truth of what we have already 
stated, viz.: that soul holds spirit and body together. 

What is the spirit in a fallen man? (See 1 Cor. 
2:11.) Let us approach this subject by making 
the distinction between "sensual" man and "spir- 
itual" man. The spirit in a fallen or " sensual' ' 
man is his mind which has vast capacity for 
God, to whom, however, he is dead, and the spirit 
of a fallen man is imprisoned in the soul and 
degraded by the body. A sensual person may have 
marvelous ideas, and a wonderful intelligence, but 
the whole life may also be corrupt and "rotten." 
For instance, take Oscar Wilde, a more flagrant ex- 
ample of gross immorality would be difficult to find, 



Existence, and Expression. 49 

yet Oscar Wilde could write that most amazing book 
called "De Profundis" in prison, after a life of un- 
thinkable immorality, which book shows a wonderful 
grasp of our Lord and His teaching. The spirit in 
Oscar "Wilde is nothing more than an intellectual 
spirit that has no life in itself, nothing more than 
what the Hebrew calls it, a "spiritual capacity," and 
it is surely enslaved by the body through the soul. 
Instead of fallen man's intelligence being able to lift 
his body up, it is exactly the opposite; a fallen man's 
intelligence more and more severs his intellectual life 
from his bodily life and produces inner hypocrisy. 
Read the lives of certain poets and literary men and 
geniuses; the exception is the man who has a clean 
life as well as a good mind. You can never judge a 
man by his intellectual flights. You may get the most 
magnificent and inspiring diction from a man who isf 
sunk lower than the beasts in moral living. He has 
a sensual spirit; that is, his soul instead of being 
able to allow his spirit to lift his body up, has dragged 
the man down and the man makes a divorce between 
his intellectual and practical life. 

A "spiritual" man is quite different. Jesus Christ 
was a spiritual personality, because the Holy Spirit 
filled His spirit, and brought spirit, soul and body 
into perfect harmony with God. That is the mean- 
ing of the atonement in its full application to you 
and me, that Jesus Christ has power to grant us the 
Holy Spirit, and that Holy Spirit "has life in itself," 
and immediately that life is manifested in my soul, 



50 Soul: The Essence, 

it wars against what I have been describing, and 
slowly and surely if the man will "mind" the Spirit 
of God, which fills his spirit and re-energizes it, he 
will find that Holy Spirit will lift his soul, and with 
his soul his body, into a totally new unity until that 
old divorce is annulled. In a spiritual personality the 
"mind of Christ' ' makes the material body of a man 
show the nature of Christ. The spirit of a man can- 
not do this, for it has not life in itself. Never judge 
a man by the fact that he has good ideas, or your- 
self by the fact that you have stirring visions of things. 
For instance, it is said that a man cannot teach the 
doctrine of entire sanctification unless he is entirely 
sanctified, but he can. The devil can teach entire 
sanctification when it pleases him. One of the most 
dangerous powers in your soul and mine is that very 
power. There is a "sensual" person and a "spiritual" 
person, and the "sensual" person is the one in whom 
the great divorce is discernible between mental con- 
ception and practical living. The whole solution of 
the problem is by receiving the Holy Spirit, not com- 
plimenting the Holy Spirit, not believing Him only; 
but receiving Him; because whatever is wrong in 
my soul or in my body the Holy Spirit has so ener- 
gized my spirit that it is able to detect all those 
things that are wrong, and enables me to rectify them 
if I "mind" them. (This use of the term "mind" is 
the Scotch use, and means "remember to obey." It 
carries with it the other Scotch word "lippen," that 
is, trust. ) ' ' Mind ' ' the Holy Spirit, ' ' mind ' ' His light, 



Existence, and Expression. 51 

"mind." His convictions, "mind" His guidance, then 
slowly and surely the "sensual" personality will be 
turned into the "spiritual" one. 

(b) The Soul and Body. "For as the soul without 
the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." 
(Jas. 2:26.) The body has the earth as its ancestor. 
"The being of man plants its foot on the earth and 
the being of earth culminates in man, for both are 
destined to the fellowship of one history." That 
means what has been insisted on all through these 
studies, that the body is the chief glory of a man 
from God's standpoint. "But we have this treasure 
in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power 
may be of God and not of us." (2 Cor. 4:7.) We 
have "this treasure," the treasure of God's Spirit be- 
ing manifested in a human spirit. It cannot be man- 
ifested in angels, or in animals, or in plants. It is 
manifested in human earthen vessels. Do not make 
that mean that God is pouring contempt on the earthen 
vessels; it is the opposite. Jesus Christ took on Him 
the nature of the "earthen vessel" type, not of the 
angelic type. Of the earth, earthy, is man's glory, 
not his shame, and it is to the earth earthy that Jesus 
Christ's full regenerating work has its ultimate reach. 
Regenerated man's body and the earth on which he 
treads are to partake in the final restitution. Our 
soul's history cannot be furthered "in spite of our 
bodies," but because of our bodies. Nothing can 
enter the soul but through the senses; the way 
God enters intb the soul is through the senses. 



52 Soul : The Essence, 

"The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit 
and they are life." Beware of the other type of 
mysticism, viz. : the quiet vision absorption ; it is not 
presented in the Bible. On the physical side all the 
soul retains comes through its bodily senses, and when 
God's Spirit is finding its way into a man's soul, again 
the senses are acquainted with it. "The Holy Spirit 
will glorify Me," says our Lord. "Where? In my 
imagination, in my heart, that is, in and through 
the intangible part of my body. And again, "He 
will bring to your remembrance what I have 
said." How can this be done saving by our ma- 
terial body in brain memory? Beware of all in- 
ward impressions. Beware of all instincts that you 
cannot curb by the wisdom that is taught by God's 
Book. If you begin to take every impression as a call 
of the Spirit of God, you will end in hallucina- 
tions. (See 2 Thess. 2: 10-12.) Test every such move- 
ment by the tests Jesus Christ has given, and 
they are all tangible, sensible tests. The only way 
you can test men is, as Jesus teaches, "by their 
fruit." You say that the fruit of the Spirit has al- 
together to do with the spiritual, but the spiritual 
in the Bible must show itself in the concrete physical 
body. God knows no divorce whatever between the 
three aspects of a man's nature, spirit, soul and body. 
They must be at one, and He sayj they are either at 
one in damnation, or one in salvation, and if a man 
has not the Spirit of God energizing his spirit, he will 
come more and more to be judged by the judgment 
that is to be passed on his bodily life. Beware 



Existence, and Expression. 53 

of the people who teach that a man's body may sin, 
but his soul does not. No such distinctions and re- 
finements are taught in God's Word. The three go 
together in God's judgment, and if a man is not en- 
livened by the Spirit of God, his intelligence has no 
power to lift him. People cannot lift themselves 
by ideas, by intelligent notions, by knowledge. That 
is why intelligence from God's standpoint is never 
first spiritual. "If any man will know My doc- 
trine," says Jesus, "let him do the will." Per- 
formance of the will before perception of the doctrine 
always in spiritual matters. Immediately you receive 
the Holy Spirit and get energized by God, you will 
find your bodies the first place of attack for the 
enemy, because the body has been the center be- 
fore for ruling the soul, and dividing it from intelligent 
standards, and the body is the last "stake" of Satan. 
It is the battleground, the "margin of the battle" 
for you and me. The presentation of such facts pro- 
duces confusion until it is understood; health simply 
means the perfect balance of my body to the out- 
side circumstances and the outside world; if any- 
thing upsets that balance, I become diseased. The 
Spirit of God will upset that balance; immediately 
the Spirit of God comes into my soul through my 
spirit, the balance is upset, and disturbance — morally, 
physically and spiritually — occurs. Jesus Christ said, 
"I did not come to send peace, but a sword," and what 
balance will He give back? The old? No! You can 
never get the same old balance of health back again; 
you have to get a new balance of holiness, which is 



54 Soul: The Essence, 

not only the balance of my bodily life, but the balance 
of my disposition with God's law, which is holiness. 
You will find the "choppy waters" come there, and 
the "choppy waters" show themselves physically. So 
many people seem to misunderstand why it is that 
their bodies are attacked now that they are spiritual 
in a way they never were attacked when they were 
not spiritual. In connection with this subject of the 
soul, we shall have to deal later with one or two very 
important subjects, viz.: the difference between de- 
moniacal sickness and natural sickness. The Bible 
has a lot to say about both of them. The Bible throws 
the only revelation light there is on your physical 
condition, and the Bible is the only book that throws 
light on our soul condition, and the Bible is the only 
book that throws light on our spiritual condition. 
Physical effects, like smelling, seeing, etc., are not 
used as methaphors only in the Bible ; they are identi- 
fied with the nature of the soul's life, and this explains 
what people call the vulgar teaching of the Bible. 

God has safeguarded us in every way. Spiritualistic 
people have committed the great crime; they have 
pushed down God's barriers, and come in contact with 
forces they never can control. And on the other hand, 
the Spirit of God can do through me anything He 
chooses if I give myself over to Jesus Christ and am 
ruled by His Spirit. "I beseech you, brethren, present 
your bodies a living sacrifice/ ' and bodies means "fac- 
ulties" as well. "Why should we expect God to deal 
with less than the devil deals with? A good man is 



Existence, and Expression. 55 

a flesh and blood good man; he is not an impression. 
The body is the "vessel" of the soul, enabling the soul 
to turn her inward life into an outward one. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SOUL: THE ESSENCE, EXISTENCE, 
AND EXPRESSION. 

FUNDAMENTAL POWERS OF THE SOUL. 

1 CONTRACTION. 

(a) FIRST POWER. Self -comprehending. Deut. 13:7. 

(b) SECOND POWER. Stretching Beyond Itself. Ps. 
27: 12. 

2 EXPANSION. 

(c) THIRD POWER. Self -living. Job 2: 6; John 10: 11. 

(d) FOURTH POWER. Spirit-penetrated. Isa. 26: 9. 

3 ROTATION. 

(e) FIFTH POWER. Stirred Sensually or Spiritually. 
Ex 23: 9* 1 Pet. 2: 11. 

(f) SIXTH POWER. Speaking the Spirit's Thoughts. 
Gen. 41: 40. 

(g) SEVENTH POWER. Sum Total in Unity. Jer. 
38: 16. 

"We mean by " fundamental, ' ' the powers that work 
in the interior of the soul. The existence of the soul 
has its origin in the spirit, and in its struggle to real- 
ize itself. This is the counterpart of the statement 
made in the last chapter, viz.: that the soul is the 
holder of the body and spirit together. 

By Contraction, we mean that the soul is a sub- 
stance, so to speak, that has power to contract into 
itself. By Expansion, we mean that the soul has 
power to strive away from itself, reaching beyond it- 

56 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 57 

self, and by Eotation, we mean that the soul has the 
power of expressing itself by the restlessness of be- 
coming. 

(This mechanical division is merely an arbitrary 
way of presenting a complex truth. All man's scien- 
tific laws and regulations are simply the mental work, 
attempting to explain observed facts. All scientific 
laws exist in men's heads. It is dangerous and wrong 
to talk about the law of gravitation as if it were a 
thing. The law of gravitation is the name given by 
scientific men in explanation of certain observed facts, 
and to say that when Jesus Christ walked on the sea 
or ascended, He " broke the law of gravitation," is a 
misstatement. He brought in, so to speak, a new series 
of facts which the so-called law of gravitation could 
not account for. This view-point will facilitate mat- 
ters when made familiar to the mind of the student.) 

The First Power is called (a) Self -Comprehending: 
(Deut. 13:6, 7; 1 Sam. 18:1.) The description indi^ 
cated is the power to comprehend itself as an indi- 
vidual separate from every other. Watch your own 
experience, and you will at once recognize this soul 
power. "When a, child begins to be "self-conscious," 
it is this power that is awakening, the power to con- 
tract into itself and to realize that it is different from 
its father and mother and from all other children, and 
the tendency increases to shut the life up to itself. 
This power begins to show itself in a feeling of 
isolation and separation, and it alternates between 
pride and shyness. Self -consciousness drags down the 
harmony of the soul. The more you meditate on that 



58 Biblical Psychology. 

line, the more you will find it revealed in God's Book 
and in your own life. In some people it lasts a long 
time; some never get beyond the first manifestation 
of the power of their own soul life, viz., they realize 
they have a. power to contract into themselves, a power 
to be different from everybody else, but they do not 
have the power to expand, to realize that they can 
come in contact with other souls -and need not be 
afraid or timid. 

That is this first power in a natural soul ; but take 
it in the spiritual. I mean by spiritual, a soul "born 
again" of the Spirit of God. How does this first 
power of the soul express itself? This power of self- 
comprehension in a soul that is born again of the 
Spirit of God shows itself in opposition to sinfulness. 
"Watch the "swing of the pendulum," as it were, in 
your own life, and in the life of anybody who is 
newly born again of the Spirit of God; it goes to 
the most extreme limit, which corresponds with the 
other extreme limit it lived in when it was in the 
"world." For instance, if the soul was given to finery 
and dress in the world, it will go to exactly the oppo- 
site extreme in its first introduction to the new life. 
This is the first recognizable power an individual soul 
has. 

The Second Power (b) is called "Stretching Beyond 
Itself." (Psa. 27: 12.) You will find that this aspect 
of the soul always enables the soul first to find the 
forces and people that are different to it. It does not 
find the things in favor with it, but exactly the oppo- 
site. The things outside are enemies, and the powers 



Soul, Its Fundamental* Powers. 59 

outside seem to* be against it. (Prov. 23:2.) Then 
that power of the soul begins to realize that it can do 
pretty well what it likes with its body — a dangerous 
moment in a human life. (Eph. 6: 6.) Or again, this 
second power realizes itself in a way that makes a 
soul able to know it can deceive everybody else. (Col. 
3:23.) 

The person is conscious of things against it; 
other souls seem to be in opposition fro it. The 
boy who is self-conscious always first realizes that 
every other, boy is his natural enemy; he is sus- 
picious of every boy who wants to make himself his 
friend. With that power comes the power to real- 
ize that I have a body, and also with it comes the 
knowledge that I can do what I like with my body. 
There is no restriction at all when that power first 
dawns: I can satisfy my bodily appetites as I choose. 
That is the dangerous moment in a soul's life. It 
enables me to know that I can cunningly deceive 
everybody else. If I am a servant, I can easily de- 
fraud my master or mistress; if I am a business man, 
I can easily defraud the public, and the whole question 
of this power of the soul is worked out to its com- 
plete issue in the life of the world. 

This second power of the soul in a spiritual nature 
shows itself in opposition to sinful craving. Jesus 
Christ says, in effect: "If you are My disciples, you 
will be defrauded easily, but you will not allow your- 
self to be defrauded from the simplicity that is in the 
Gospel." Knowledge of evil broadens a man's mind, 
makes him tolerant, but paralyzes action. The knowl- 



60 Biblical Psychology. 

edge of good broadens a man's mind, and makes 
him intolerant of all sin, and shows itself in intense 
activity. A bad man, an evil-minded man, may be 
amazingly tolerant of everything and every one, no 
matter whether they are good or bad, Christian or 
not, and his action is paralyzed entirely ; he is tolerant 
of everything, — of the devil, the flesh, the world, sin 
and everything else. A soul born again of God shows 
itself at once in intolerance. Jesus Christ never toler- 
ated sin for one moment, and when His nature gets 
its way in my soul, the same intolerance is shown, and 
it manifests itself not in eye-service. If I am a serv- 
ant, I won't serve my mistress or master with this 
cunning power of my soul, realizing I have power to 
deceive ; but I will use this power of my soul to show 
that I belong to Jesus Christ. And I won't use this 
power of my soul to do what I like with my body. 
This power of the soul will show itself in a spiritual 
soul in intense opposition to all sinful cravings. When 
a soul is born again of the Spirit of God, it does 
everything, from sweeping a room to preaching the 
Gospel, from cleaning streets to governing a nation, 
for the glory of God. The whole mainspring of the 
soul's life is altered, and this power manifests itself 
in stretching beyond itself in this peculiar manifes- 
tation. 

2. Expansion. 

The Third /Power (c) is Self -living. (Job 2: 
6 ; John 10 : M^ These two passages refer to the 
one power in a man that neither God nor the 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 61 

devil can touch without the man's sanction. The devil 
has power up to a certain point, but he cannot touch 
my life (see Job), and whenever Jesus Christ pre- 
sents the Gospel of God to a soul, it is always on the 
line of "Are you willing !" No coercion. This is at 
once the most fearful and the most glorious power in 
a human soul. It can withstand the devil success- 
fully, and it can withstand God quite as successfully. 
This self-living power is the human spirit, which is 
as immortal as God's Spirit, whether the human spirit 
be good spirit or bad spirit ; it is as immortal as God, 
and as indestructible. You will find this is the power 
in a soul that can make itself on a par with 
GodL It is the very essence of Satan, and the 
power that can make a man either a compeer of the 
devil or a compeer of the Lord is the most tremendous 
and terrible power in the soul. Jesus Christ, speak- 
ing of His own incarnation, refers to this self-living 
power. He says, "I lay down My life of Myself; no 
man taketh it from Me." God has so constituted us 
that there must be a free willingness on our part. 

How does this power show itself when the soul 
is born again of the Spirit of God, lifted into 
the domain our Lord lives in? This power shows it- 
self in opposition to sinful passionateness. Passion- 
ateness simply means something that carries every- 
thing before it. The prince of this world is intense, 
and the Spirit of God is intense. When Paul talks 
about the two working in a man's soul, he mentions 
the intensity in the word "lust." The Spirit lusteth, 



62 Biblical Psychology. 

intensely, passionately desires the whole soul and life 
and body for God; and the mind of the flesh intensely 
and passionately longs for the whole soul and life 
and body back again to the service of the world. The 
Bible points out that passionateness in the spiritual 
realm means something that overcomes every obstacle. 
When the writer to the Hebrews talks about "Chris- 
tian perfection," he talks about this very thing, this 
overwhelming passion that carries the soul right on 
to all God has for it. "Be filled with the Spirit," 
this is the key word of life. The way Jesus Christ 
indicates that we overcome the world is not by pas- 
sionlessness, not only by the patience of exhaustion, 
but by passion, by the passion of an intense and all- 
consuming love to God. This is the characteris- 
tic in a born-again soul — opposition to every sin- 
ful passionateness. Do insist in your own mind 
on this thing, that God does not work in vague, 
gentle impressions when He begins these works in 
a human soul; but in violent oppositions that rend 
and tear the soul life from what it was, and make 
it instead of being a place of harmonious happiness, 
exactly the opposite for a season. You find this kind 
of experience in every one of us when we are going 
on with God. "When we are first introduced to the 
life of God, there is always that violent opposition to 
everything that used to be prevalent, and it is not 
a mistake; it is what God intends, because it is the 
force of a totally new life. 

The Fourth Power (d) is Spirit Penetration. (Isa. 
26:9; Jude 19.) I mean by "spirit penetration" the 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 63 

spiritual power in man which, struggles to express itself 
in soul. The spirit of man, in an unregenerate nature, 
is the power of mind not energized by the Holy Spirit 
and having no life ' ' in itself. ? ' It proves utterly futile 
in lifting the body, and produces a great divorce be- 
tween the ideal and real. Every type and kind of 
intellectual excellence is a snare of Satan unless the 
spirit of the man has been renewed by the in- 
coming of the Spirit of God. A man's intellect 
may give him noble ideas and power to express them 
through his soul in language, but it has no power 
to carry them out in action. You will find the charge 
of idolatry is very apt here. For instance, we are apt 
to ridicule, or pass over with a smile, the descriptions 
given of idolatry in, say the Book of Isaiah, where the 
writer refers to a tree being taken, one part of it 
being used to cook the man's food, and the other 
part, carved into an idol, to which the man bows, 
and worships; yet this is exactly what men do with 
their ideas. The intellect forms ideas for guiding its 
physical life, and then takes other ideas and worships 
them as God, and if a man has made his own ideas 
his god, he is greater than his own god. This is not 
such a terrible power, perhaps, as the third power of 
the soul, but it is a power that works havoc, unless 
the soul is right with God. It is the power that pro- 
duces internal hypocrisy, the power that makes me 
able to think good thoughts while I live a bad life, 
unconvicted. 

How does this power show itself in "those who are 
born again of the Spirit of God? This power shows 



64 Biblical Psychology. 

itself in opposition to secularity. Take your own ex- 
perience, those of you who are spiritual — spiritual in 
the Bible sense, identified with the Lord Jesus Christ 
in a practical way — can you ever make a distinction 
now between secular and sacred? It is all sacred; but 
in the first beginnings of this power you will always 
find the line drawn clearly and strongly between 
what men call " secular' ' and what they call "sa- 
cred." Jesus Christ had no division of secular and 
sacred in His life, but when this power begins with 
us it always manifests itself in that line of cleavage. 
There are certain things I won't do; certain things 
I won't look at; certain things I won't eat; certain 
hours I won 't sleep. None of it is wrong, it is the 
first beginnings of this power of the Spirit of God 
in a soul, utilizing the powers of the soul for God; 
but as the soul goes on, it gets to a full-orbed condi- 
tion where it manifests itself as it did in the life 
of Jesus and all is sacred. If you obey the Spirit of God, 
and practice through your physical life what God has put 
in your heart by His Spirit, when the crisis comes you 
will find your nature will ' ' stand by you. ' ' So many peo- 
ple misunderstand why they fall. It comes from this 
condition — people say, "Now I have received the grace 
of God, I am all right." Paul says, "Do not receive 
the grace of God in vain," and these people do not 
go practicing day by day, and week by week, work- 
ing out what "God has worked in," and when a 
crisis comes, God's grace is there all right enough, but 
their nature is not ; their nature has not been brought 
into practice, and the consequence is the nature does 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 65 

bot " stand by" them, and down they go, and they 
blame God. You must bring the bodily life into prac- 
tice, steadily, day by day, and hour by hour, and 
moment by moment; then when the crisis comes you 
will find not only God's grace, but your own nature 
will " stand by" you, and the crisis is passed over 
without any disaster at all, but exactly the opposite, 
in building up the soul into a stronger attitude to- 
wards God. 

3. Rotation. 

The Fifth Power (e), Stirred Sensually or Spir- 
itually. (Ex. 23:9; 1 Pet. 2:11.) Remember the 
soul is manifested itself as the spirit struggles to 
make itself expressed. Exodus 23 : 1-9 is a magnificent 
passage, and the more you read it the more magnifi- 
cent you will find it to be. It is intensely, movingly 
practical in every detail, and there this power of the 
soul is clearly recognizable. It fits itself on with 
the second power, viz., the power every one of us has 
to deceive everybody else, to do cunning things, to 
defraud, and to utilize other people for our own ends ; 
and the warning is, be careful you are not stirred 
in your soul by the wrong spirit. 1 Peter 2 : 11 is the 
corresponding passage. If the soul can be stirred 
by its own cunning, the cunning of a man's own nature 
on the inside, it can be stirred by vileness and abom- 
inable sensuality through the senses. 

How does this power show itself in a regenerated 
soult It shows itself in opposition to worldly bondage. 
ITou will find in your own experience, and in every- 



66 Biblical Psychology. 

body else's experience that is recorded, that when 
your life is going on on God's line, God is putting the 
fear of you on those who are on the outside, because 
you have a scorn against worldly bondages. The 
Spirit of God in you will not allow you to bow your 
neck to any yoke but the yoke of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. You will see instantly when you stand on 
this platform of God's grace that the bondage is in 
the world. The "etiquettes" and standards in the 
world are absolute and terrible bondages, and those 
who live in them are abject slaves, and yet the extra- 
ordinary thing is that when the worldling sees any- 
body emancipated, under the yoke of the Lord Jesus 
Christ, he says "they are in bondage," whereas ex- 
actly the opposite is true. True liberty only exists 
when the soul has gotten this holy scorn in it, "I will 
not bow my neck to any yoke but the yoke of the 
Lord Jesus Christ." He was meek to all His Father 
did, but intolerant to all the devil did. He would 
not suffer compromise with the devil in any shape or 
form. This power of the soul, when the soul is born 
again, manifests itself in opposition to all and every 
worldly bondage. 

The Sixth Power '(f), is Speaking the Spirit's 
Thoughts. (Gen. 41:40.) We are now dealing with 
Rotation, the restlessness of becoming. This is how all 
these powers are going to manifest themselves in a 
fully matured soul. That picture in Genesis is the pic- 
ture of a soul right with God, but remember that the 
corresponding picture is true. A man in whom all 
these powers of the soul are developing will get tQ 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 67 

a place where he shows literally, not only with his 
mouth, but with his eyes and every power of his 
body, who it is that sits on the throne of his life. 
If it is the " prince of this world/' the man is prime 
minister under the devil, of his own body. When 
the full power of the soul is developed I am obliged 
to carry out the behests of the ruling monarch. 

When a soul is born again of the Spirit of God, 
how does this power show itself? It shows itself 
in opposition to worldly thoughts and customs. Take 
Pharaoh in Genesis 41:40 as a picture of Jesus 
Christ, "Only in the throne will I be greater than 
thou." The soul that is born again of God, and has 
been walking on with God, identified with Jesus Christ 
in practical sanctification, and has the full powers of 
the soul developed and manifested, that soul is prime 
minister of his own body under Jesus Christ's domin- 
ion. That is the ideal distinctly, and not an ideal 
only, but an ideal that Jesus Christ expects us 
to carry out, all the powers of the soul working 
in an express personality through my body, revealing 
the ruler to be the Lord Jesus Christ. 

We now come to the Last Power (g), Sum Total in 
Unity. ( Jer. 38 : 18.) The sum total is a perfect unity, 
either a perfect unity of badness, or a perfect unity 
of goodness. (Gen. 46:26.) The word "sour' there 
refers to the full maturity of the powers manifested 
in the bodily life. That is the description of a full- 
grown man, whether he is a bad man or a good man, 
and when a soul gets into full maturity of expression, 
the chances are he will never alter. In Jeremiah 38 : 16 



68 Biblical Psychology. 

the soul is mentioned in the same way. It is not 
the soul in its beginnings, in its chaotic state; it 
is the soul manifested, the soul absolutely mastered 
by the ruling spirit and expressing itself through the 
body. 

How does this perfection of soul life show itself 
in a born-again man, a man who is thoroughly and 
perfectly living the life God wants him to live? It 
shows itself in opposition to all other powers, and man- 
ifests itself in its bodily life in the spirit of wisdom 
which comes from above. It literally means the un- 
crushable loveliness of a soul manifesting God's rule, 
all its powers now in harmony. This is not in Heaven ; 
this is on the earth. This is not mental perfection, 
it is not bodily perfection; it is the perfection of a 
sours attitude when all the powers of that soul are 
under the control of the Spirit of God. You will 
find now all the "corners" are chipped away, all the 
extreme swinging of the pendulum regulated, all the 
chaotic turmoil has become ordered, and the soul is 
now "manifesting the life of the Lord Jesus in its 
mortal flesh/ ' 

In way of revision, you will find these pow- 
ers of the soul show themselves more or less in 
every one of us. For instance, you never think of 
judging a boy or girl by the same standards of judg- 
ment that you pass on them when they are matured, 
because neither a boy nor a girl is in full grip of a 
character. But once let a soul get matured, and the 
character manifested meets a severe judgment; there 
is no excuse made for it now; its powers are consoli- 



Soul, Its Fundamental Powers. 69 

dated, and the wrong it does is not the wrong of 
an impulse, it is the wrong of a "dead set." When 
the soul is consolidated and right with God, you 
find exactly the opposite. The whole character mani- 
fests something that has a strong family likeness to 
Jesus Christ. There is certainly a chaotic attitude 
in Christian experience. Read the Apostle Paul's 
earnest, almost motherlike solicitation over young con- 
verts; he almost seems to " croon' ' (to use an old 
Scotch word) and agonize in heart over the young 
converts, because of the chaotic state of their souls, 
and you will find that Jesus Christ commissioned Peter, 
and the other disciples through Peter, to "feed My 

lambs. ' ' 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOUL: THE ESSENCE, EXISTENCE, 
AND EXPRESSION. 

FLESHLY PRESENTATION OF THE SOUL 

1 IN EMBEYO. 

(a) Before Consciousness. Ps. 139: 15. 

(b) Breath Consciousness. Gen. 2:7; Isa. 2: 22. 

(c) Blood Circulation. Gen. 9: 4; Lev. 17: 10, 14. 

2 IN EVOLUTION. 

(d) "Hub" of Life. Prov. 4:23. 

(e) " Hubbub" of Life. 

(1) Sense of Seeing. Ps. 119: 37. 

(2) Sense of Hearing. Ilob 12: 11. 

(3) Sense of Tasting. Ps. 119: 103. 

(4) Sense of Smelling. Gen. 8: 21; 2 Cor. 2: 14, 16. 

(5) Sense of Touching. Acts 17:27; 1 John 1:1. 

3 IN EXPEESSION. 

(f) Hilarity of Life. Eccl. 11:9, 11; Luke 6:45. 

(g) Himself. Judg. 8: 18; Luke 2: 40, 52; Eph. 4: 13. 

We do not mean what the Apostle Paul meant when 
he used the word "fleshly" in his Epistles; we are 
using the word to mean this natural body. 

The subject is divided under three headings: In 
Embryo, in Evolution, and in Expression. In Embryo, 
means in the beginning; Evolution means growth, 
growth of the human soul; (evolution is a fact 
both scientific and Scriptural, if by that word is 
meant that there is such a thing as growth in every; 

70 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 71 

species, but not from one species into another. For 
instance, there is growth in a plant, there is growth 
in an animal, and there is growth in a man, and that 
is the only way we are using the word.) The last 
division simply means the Expression of my soul in, 
and through, my body. 

1. In Embryo. 

(a) Before Consciousness, (b) Breath Conscious- 
ness, and (c) Blood Circulation. (Hos. 12:3; Gen. 
25:22; Luke 1:41.) In the very beginning of human 
life, body, soul and spirit are together. (Psa. 139: 15.) 
Modern tendencies of thought which are doing great 
havoc, indicate that a child has not a soul until it is 
born into this world. The Bible says that body, soul 
and spirit develop together. This may not appear to 
the majority of us as being of any importance, but it will 
soon, if you are going to come in contact with the 
views that are abroad to-day, even among some who 
call themselves Christians, but who are really wolves 
among the sheep, and whose teachings come from the 
bottomless pit. 

'(b) Breath Consciousness. (Gen. 2:7; Isa. 2:22.) 
In a multitude of verses in the Bible, the soul life and 
the breath of the body are identified. You will find the 
Biblje teaches that it is not the body that breathes, but 
the soul. The body did not breathe in the beginning, 
before God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of 
life, so as far as conscious soul life is concerned, it 
depends on our breathing, and you will find that all 
through God's Book the soul life is connected with 



72 Biblical Psychology. 

the breathing, in fact it is incorporated into every- 
body's idea of life that when breath is suspended life 
is gone, "the soul is departed" is the popular phrase. 
Then take the next (c) Blood Circulation. (Gen. 9: 
4; Lev. 17: 10-14.) The whole soul is connected in the 
Bible and identified with breath and blood, two fleshly, 
physical things. In Genesis 9 : 4 blood and soul are 
alternate terms, they are identified entirely, and the 
verses that go to prove this in God's Book are in- 
numerable. When the blood is spilt, the soul is gone ; 
when the breath is taken, the soul is gone. The whole 
life of a man, physically, consists in his breath and in 
his blood. The soul, in working itself into the blood, 
never fails to impart to it the peculiar character of its 
own life. This psychologically is brought out very clear- 
ly by our Lord's statement in John 6, "Unless ye eat My 
flesh and drink My blood, ye have no life in you." 
The ruling disposition of the soul will show itself in 
the blood, the physical blood. In all our languages, 
and meanings, and statements, we speak about good 
or bad, merciful or tender, hot or cold blood. This 
is all based on Scriptural teaching, and Jesus Christ's 
teaching reveals that the fact that men are His dis- 
ciples is shown in the blood, the physical life. The 
old soul tyranny and disposition, the old selfish deter- 
mination to seek my own ends, manifests itself in my 
body, through my blood, and when that disposition 
of soul is altered it shows itself at once in the blood also. 
Instead of the old tempers and the old passions being 
manifested in my physical blood, the good temper re- 
veals itself. It never does to remove Jesus Christ's 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation, 73 

spiritual teaching into the domain of the inane and 
vague, it must come right down where the devil works, 
and as the devil does not work in vagueness, but 
through flesh and blood, neither does the Lord, and the 
characteristics of the soul for better or for worse are 
shown in the blood. The first fundamental reference in 
the verse, "Without shedding of blood, there is no re- 
mission of sins," is unquestionably to our Lord, yet it 
has a direct reference to ourselves. Do we begin to know 
what the Bible means by the "blood of Jesus Christ"? 
Blood and life are absolutely inseparable. The two 
experimental statements of salvation and sanctification 
are never separated as we separate them; they are 
separable in experience, but God's Book always speaks 
in terms of entire sanctification when it talks of be- 
ing "in Christ." "Whenever Paul deals with personal 
experience he begins to show where people have gone 
wrong. When we refer to the blood of Jesus Christ, 
we are apt to look upon it as a kind of magic-work- 
ing thing, instead of its being an impartation to us 
of the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole 
meaning of being "born again" and identified with 
the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with His life, 
is that His blood may flow through my mortal body. 
Literally then, the tempers, and the affections, and 
the dispositions, that were manifested in the life of 
the Lord will now be manifested in some degree. Our 
present day "wise talk" is to push all the teaching 
of Jesus Christ into something that is remote ; yet the 
New Testament drives its teachings straight down to 
the essential necessity of physical expression of spir- 
itual life, that just as bad soul life shows itself 



74 Biblical Psychology. 

in the body, the good soul life shows itself there 
too. There are always two sides to Jesus Christ's 
atonement in my life — not only His life for me, but 
His life in me for my own; no Christ for me if I 
do not have Christ in me. All through, there is this 
strenuous, glorious practicing in my bodily life, the 
changes which God has wrought ip my soul through His 
Spirit, and the only test that I am in earnest is that 
I "work out what He works in." Let us apply this 
truth to ourselves, and you will find in practi- 
cal experience this, that God does alter passions, God 
does alter nerves, God does alter breathing, God does 
alter tempers, God alters every physical thing the 
devil has used, God alters every physical thing a hu- 
man being can use, and we can use these bodies, as 
Paul says, as slaves to the new disposition. We can 
make our eyes, and ears, and every one of our bodily 
organs express, as slaves, the altered disposition of 
our soul. Kemember, then, that blood is the man- 
ifestation of the soul life, and you will find all through 
God's Book that God applies moral characteristics to 
the blood — "innocent blood," "guilty blood" — that re- 
refers to the soul, and the soul life must show itseH 
in this physical connection. 

2. In Evolution. 

(d) The "Hub of Life." (Prov.4:23.) The "hub" 
literally means the center of the wheel, and the center 
of my soul life, my personal life and my spirit life, 
is mentioned in Proverbs 4 : 23. We will deal with 
this fully when we come to the chapters on " Heart." 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 75 

The Bible has placed in the heart everything that the 
modern psychologist puts in the "head." 

(e) "Hubbub of Life. " By "hubbub " is meant ex- 
actly what the word says, a tremendous confusion. 
This confusion in the soul life is brought about by the 
exercise of our senses. "In the Bible, psychological 
terms are not merely metaphors, but reflect the organic 
condition of the soul." The body makes itself inward 
by means of the soul, and the spirit makes itself out- 
ward by means of the soul. The soul is the binder 
of these two together. There is not one part of the 
human body left out in God's Book; every part, in- 
side and outside, physically, is dealt with and made 
to have either a direct connection with sin, or a di- 
rect connection with holiness. That is not an acci- 
dent, it is part of the Divine revelation. The senses of 
sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, to the 
majority of us do not seem to have any meaning what- 
ever spiritually ; but in the Bible they have. In the Bible 
they are dealt with in anything but a slight manner; 
they are dealt with as being expressions of your soul 
life. The Bible teaches that every part of man's physi- 
cal life, inside and out, is either closely connected 
with sin or with salvation and anything that sin can put 
wrong, Jesus Christ can put right. "We are dealing with 
soul as it expresses itself through the body. The organs 
of the body are not used as pictures, but as indicators 
of the state of the spiritual life. We mentioned be- 
fore, in connection with breathing, that the internal 
part of a man's nature is affected by his spiritual con- 
nection. If his spiritual connections are not right with 



76 Biblical Psychology. 

God, his bodily condition will follow, sooner or later, 
the disorganization. It is proved over and over again 
in mental diseases. In most insane persons a bodily 
organ is seriously affected, and the old method of deal- 
ing with insanity was to try and get that organ healed. 
The modern method is simply to leave the organ alone 
as far as trying to get that right, and concentrate on 
the brain. "When the mind is right, the disease in the 
organ goes. 

Take first of all (1), the sense of seeing. (Psa. 
119 : 37.) That is not a figure of speech ; it is the literal 
things we look at. How am I going to have those 
things, called my eyes, kept from beholding vanity? 
By having the disposition of my soul altered. God con- 
trols the whole thing, and you find that you can control 
it too, when once He gives you the start. That is the 
marvelous impetus of the salvation of Jesus Christ. Our 
eyes record to the brain what they look at, but our 
disposition makes our eyes look at what it wants to 
look at, and soon it will pay no attention to anything 
else. "When your disposition is right, you may place 
the eyes, literally the body, where you may, and the 
disposition will guard what it records. So this is not 
a figure of speech ; it is a literal experience. God does 
»alter the desire to look at the things we used to, 
and we find that we can guard our eyes, because He 
has altered the disposition of the soul life. 

Then take (2), hearing. (Job 12:11.) Jesus 
Christ Himself continually refers to hearing. "He 
that hath ears to hear, let him hear." We al- 
ways say He means the ears of our heart, but that 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 77 

is very misguiding. He means these physical ears 
which are trained by the disposition of your soul life. 
For instance, God spoke to Jesus once, and the peo- 
ple said it thundered. Jesus did not think it thun- 
dered. His ears were trained, by the disposition of 
His soul, to know His Father's voice. You can elab- 
orate that endlessly for yourself all through God's 
Book. I will always hear what I listen for, and my 
disposition determines what I listen for, just as the 
ruling disposition of the soul either keeps the eyes from 
beholding vanity, or makes them behold nothing else. 
When Jesus alters your disposition, He gives you the 
power to see things as He sees them, and to hear as 
He hears. A telegraph operator does not hear 
the ticking of the machine which we do. "Why? The 
ears are trained; the disposition detects the message; 
we cannot ; we detect the jingle and the tapping of the 
machine and make nothing of it. When God speaks, 
some people say, " Thank God, I heard His voice!" 
How did they hear it? The disposition of the soul 
enabled the ears to hear something that the soul 
interpreted at once. Isaiah 55: 1, "Who hath believed 
our report?" That literally means, "Who hath believ- 
ed the things we are talking about, to whom is the 
arm of the Lord revealed?" You have a disposition 
of soul that can discern the "arm of the Lord," or 
you are just like the beasts of the field who take 
things as they happen, and nothing more. The Psalm- 
ist said, "0 Lord, I am even as a brute before you." 
I live without any spiritual intelligence. The dispo- 



78 Biblical Psychology. 

sition of my soul determines what I see, and the dis- 
position of my soul determines what I hear. 

(3), Tasting. (Psa. 119:103.) We are getting 
still more and more remote, and difficult to under- 
stand, from our ordinary unspiritual experiences be- 
cause we have divorced entirely, tasting and smel- 
ling, seeing and hearing, and touching, from spirit- 
ual conditions, because the majority of Christian work- 
ers have never been trained in what the Bible has to 
say about ourselves. It can be proved over and over 
again, not only in personal experience, but all through 
God's Book, that He does alter the tastes. Not mental 
tastes merely but taste in physical things. He 
alters the physical taste for foods and drinks, but 
something far more practical than that, the blessing 
of God on our soul life gives us the sensible feeling 
akin to taste, or akin to sight, or akin to hearing. 

(4), Smelling. (Gen. 8:21; 2 Cor. 2:14-16.) 
The Bible has more to say about the sense of smell 
than any other, and it is the only sense we make 
nothing of. This sense of smell to the majority 
of us has only the meaning, viz., an olfactory nerve 
that makes me conscious of pleasant things, or ex- 
actly the opposite; but the Bible deals with the sense 
of smell in another way. Read this quotation from 
a book written by Helen Keller, entitled "The World 
I Live In," the chapter she calls "Smell, the Fallen 
Angel." Remember, she writes as one who cannot see, 
nor hear, nor speak. 

"For some inexplicable reason the sense of smell 
does not hold the high position it deserves among its 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 79 

sisters. There is something of the fallen angel about 
it. "When it woos us with woodland scents and be- 
guiles us with the fragrance of lovely gardens, it is 
admitted frankly to our discourse. But when it gives 
us warning of something noxious in our vicinity, it 
is treated as if the demon had the upper hand of 
the angel, and is relegated to outer darkness, punished 
for its faithful service. It is most difficult to keep 
the true significance of words when one discusses the 
prejudices of mankind, and I find it hard to give an 
account of odor-perceptions which shall at once be 
dignified and truthful. 

"In my experience, smell is most important, and 
I find that there is high authority for the nobility of 
the sense which we have neglected and disparaged. 
It is recorded that the Lord commanded that incense 
be burnt before Him continually with a sweet savor. 
I doubt if there is any sensation arising from sight 
more delightful than the odors which filter through 
sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents 
which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling 
the wide wo-rld with invisible sweetness. A whiff of 
the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never 
seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest 
experiences. I never smell daisies without living over 
again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I 
spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new 
words and the names of things. Smell is a potent wiz- 
ard that transports us across a thousand miles and all 
the years we have lived. The odor of fruits wafts me 
to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the 



80 Biblical Psychology. 

peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleet- 
ing, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract 
with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, 
my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet mem- 
ories of summers gone and ripening grain-fields far 
away." 

* Helen Keller's sense of smell takes the place of 
sight. That is a case which brings the Bible idea 
more home to us. Let this subject be revised in all 
our Bible study and enable us to see whether we are 
leaving whole tracts of our sense-life indifferently, not 
understanding that we can develop and cultivate eyes, 
and nose, and mouth, and ears, and every organ of 
the body to manifest the disposition Jesus Christ has 
put in us. Not one that has been disorganized, 
but can be reorganized; not only these senses that we 
are dealing with, but the senses we cannot deal with, 
every one of them, internal and external, is mentioned 
in God's Book, and is either regulated by the Spirit 
of God, or by the spirit of Satan. Paul, when 
he refers to lust, never places it in the body; he 
places it in the disposition of the soul. "Let not 
sin reign in your mortal bodies, that ye should obey 
it in the lusts thereof." Jesus Christ had a fleshly 
body like I have, but lust resides in the ruling dis- 
position of the body, and when God changes that rul- 
ing disposition, the same body that was used as the 
instrument of sin to work all manner of uncleanness 
and unrighteousness, is now used as the slave of the 
new disposition. Not a different body ; the same body, 
but a new disposition. 

* The most fascinating and literary of such unscriptural specu- 
lations is found in "The Child of the Dawn" by A. C. Benson. 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 81 

Now last, take (5), the sense of touch. (Acts 17 : 27 ; 
1 John 1:1.) There the reference is not to a mental 
feeling, but to real, downright bodily feeling. The 
disciples had felt God incarnate in Jesus Christ. That 
is where the issue is so strong between Unitarian teach- 
ing and the New Testament teaching, and you will 
find that God does not ignore feeling. God does not 
ignore the sense of touch, He elevates it. The first 
effort of the soul, with its new disposition, towards 
bringing the body into harmony is a dark effort of 
faith. It has not yet gotten the body under way, 
therefore feeling has to be discounted. When the 
new disposition from God has entered the soul, it 
takes its first steps in the dark of faith, without feel- 
ing. But immediately it has gained control, all these 
bodily organs are brought into physical harmony with 
the ruling disposition. 

3. In Expression. 

(f) "Hilarity of Life." (Eccl. 11:9; Luke 6: 
45.) Both these passages have reference to the 
full physical hilarity of life. Remember, a bad 
man whose life is bad has a hilariously happy time, 
and a good man whose life is right has a good 
and hilarious time. All in between are diseased and 
more or less sick, there is something wrong somewhere : 
but the healthy pagan and the healthy saint are the 
two that are described all through God's Book as 
hilarious. The New Testament and especially the 
apostle Paul is intense on this hilarity of life. En- 
thusiasm has the idea — intoxicated with the life 
of God. Watch human nature. If men do not 



82 Biblical Psychology. 

get thrillings in the right way, they will get them 
in the wrong way. If they do not get thrilled by the 
Spirit of God, they will try to get thrilled with strong 
drink. "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess/ ' 
says Paul, "but be filled with the Spirit." We have 
no business to be spiritually half dead, to hang like 
clogs on God's plan; we have no business to be sickly 
unless it is only a preparatory stage for something 
better, unless God is nursing us through some spir- 
itual illness; but if it is the main characteristic 
of life, there is something wrong somewhere. Psalm 
73 describes the bad man as having all that heart 
can desire; this is the expression of the soul satisfac- 
tion without God; yet in another Psalm, the Psalmist 
says his "bones delight themselves in marrow and fat- 
ness." He is talking about the physical bones, which 
are affected amazingly by the condition of the soul life. 
Luke 11 gives a description of the bad man : "When the 
strong man armed guardeth his palace, his goods are in 
peace." The context there refers to the prince of this 
world, when Satan guards this world, his goods — the 
souls of men — are in peace ; they 'are quite happy, quite 
hilarious and full of life. One of the most misleading 
statements to make is that worldlings have not a happy 
time; they have a thoroughly happy time. The point 
is that their happiness is on the wrong level, and 
when they come across Jesus Christ, who is the 
enemy of all that happiness, they experience annoy- 
ance. People have to be persuaded that Jesus Christ 
has a higher style of life for them, otherwise they 
feel they had better not have come across Him. When 



Soul, Its Fleshly Presentation. 83 

a worldly person who is happy, moral, upright, cornea 
in contact with Jesus Christ, who will destroy the 
whole thing, and put him, and his happiness and 
peace, on a different level, he has to be persuaded 
that He is a Being worthy to do it, and instead of the 
Gospel being attractive, it is the opposite. Immedi- 
ately the Gospel is presented to a healthy, happy, 
hilarious unsaved person, there is violent opposition 
straight off. "No, thank you; we will agree with 
you if you will agree with these things; but if you 
are going to tell us we have to be made all over agaiir, 
no thank you!" The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not 
present what men of the world want, but exactly 
what they need. As long as you talk about be- 
ing happy and bright, they like to listen to you-, 
but talk about having the disposition of the soul 
altered, and that the garden of the world has to be 
turned into a wilderness by God and afterward into 
a garden of the Lord, then you find the opposition. 

Lastly (g), " himself.' ' I mean by " himself J not 
God, but man. ( Judg. 8 : 18 ; Luke 2 : 40, 52 ; Eph. 4 : 13.) 
There is the description splendidly given of a full- 
orbed man, bad or good. A full-orbed man or 
woman bad (bad in God's sight) may be a won- 
derful being to look at, and full-orbed men and women 
right with God may also be wonderful beings to 
look at. The rest of us are simply beings in the mak- 
ing. There is a tremendous fascination about a com- 
pletely bad man; there is nothing more desirable for 
this world than a thoroughly well-trained bad man or 
woman, but they are the opponents of Jesus Christ, 



84 Biblical Psychology. 

they hate Him with every power of the soul; I mean 
the Jesus Christ of the New Testament. 

God grant that we may get the ruling disposition 
of our souls so altered that we will practically work it 
out. How many of us have had experimental touch 
with the grace of God? how many of us have received 
the Spirit of God? Are we working it out? Is every 
organ of the body enslaved to that new disposition? 
Or are we using our eyes for what we want to see, using 
our body for our right to ourselves? If so we are re- 
ceiving the grace of God in vain. God grant that we 
may be Christian men and women who are determined 
to work out through these bodies the life that Jesus 
Christ has put in by His Spirit. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

SOUL: THE ESSENCE, EXISTENCE, 
AND EXPRESSION. 

PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OP THE SOUL, 



1 PRE-EXISTENCE. 

(a) Spurious Speculations. Deut. 29:29; Eev. 5:3. 

(b) Startling Scriptures. Jer. 1:5; Mat 3:1; Roni 9: 
11, 13; Luke 1: 41. 

(c) Steadying Scriptures. 

(1) No "Soul" before Body. Gen. 1, 2. 

(2) No "Soul" Destiny pre-Adamic. Rom. 5: 12. 

(3) No "Soul" but by Procreation. Gen. 5. 

N. B. Note the pre-existence of our Lord Jesus Christ. John 
17:5. 

2 PRESENT EXISTENCE. 

(a) Satisfaction of the Soul. Ps. 66: 9, 12, 16; Isa. 55: 3. 

(b) Sins and Surroundings of the Soul. Prov. 18: 7; 
Psa. 6; Ezek. 18:4; 1 Pet. 1:9. 

(c) Supernatural Setting for the Soul. Luke 9: 54, 56; 
Eph. 6: 12; 1 Cor. 10:20, 21. 

N. B. " Spiritualism ' ' is the great "Soul" crime. Sickness, 
natural and demoniacal, will be examined. 

3 PERPETUAL EXISTENCE. 

(a) Mortal Aspect of the Soul. Job 14:2; Jas. 4:14. 

(b) Immortal Aspect of the Soul. Luke 16: 25, 26; 
23 : 43. 

(c) "Eternal Life" of the Soul, and "Eternal Death 7 ' 
of the Soul. Matt 10: 28; Rom. 5: 21; 6: 23. 

N. B. The peculiar error of "Soul Sleep" will be examined. 
Also "Larger Hope" and "Conditional Immortal- 
ity" will be considered. 

N. B. Facts of sleeping, waking and dreaming will be pre- 
sented and analyzed. 
85 



86 Biblical Psychology. 

In concluding our general survey of the great 
theme of the Soul, we purpose to sketch in outline the 
past, present and future state of the soul. 1. Pre- 
existence. The speculation that souls existed in a 
former world. The student cannot be too careful 
about (a) speculation, for there is no book which 
lends itself more readily to speculation than the 
Bible, and yet the Bible warns against speculation. 
By speculation we mean taking a series of facts and 
weaving all kinds of fancies round them. In Deute- 
ronomy 29:29 and Revelation 5:3 the bounds where 
human knowledge goes with regard to Bible revelation 
and where it stops, are fairly well marked. For in- 
stance, what is revealed in God's Book is for us; and 
what is not revealed is not for us; speculation means 
we go into what is not revealed, and the whole sub- 
ject of pre-existence, as it is popularly taught to-day, 
is not revealed in God's Book; it is speculation based 
on certain things said in God's Book. Theosophy 
largely lends itself to this sort of thing, and theos- 
ophy and occult speculations are all ultimately danger- 
ous to the mental, moral and spiritual balance. Spec- 
ulate if you care to, but do not teach it as a revela- 
tion contained in the Bible. 

It has already been said that the Bible does not 
teach pre-existence, yet we have (b) some startling 
Scriptures which appear to contradict that statement. 
( Jer 1:5; Mai. 3:1; Rom. 9 : 11-13 ; Luke 1 : 41.) We 
have called these startling Scriptures for the obvious 
reason that they look as if the Bible did teach pre-exist- 
ence. There is what we may term a false and a true pre- 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 87 

existence. False pre-existence, as already stated, is 
that we existed as human souls before we came into 
this world. The true pre-existence is in God's mind. 
This is not an easy subject to state, but it is a sub- 
ject which is revealed in Scripture — the pre-existence 
in God's mind of what appears in this order of things, 
not only in a general way, not only by the great big 
fact of the human race, but right down to individual 
lives. Individual lives are expressions of a pre-exist- 
ing idea in the mind of God. That is the true pre- 
existence. You may call it ideal, or call it what you 
like, but ttiere it is revealed in God's Book. In 
the few passages given, and in a great many more, 
the true pre-existing idea is clearly manifest in the 
divine mind. 

One more thing with regard to individual spir- 
itual experience, and that is, that our individual 
lives ought to be, and can be manifest answers 
to the ideas in God's mind. " Man's goings are 
of the Lord; how then can he understand his 
ways?" and it gives a lofty dignity, as well as 
a great carefulness to human lives. "We have it beau- 
tifully expressed in the life of our Lord in a way 
that is becoming very familiar to us — He never worked 
from His right to Himself, He never performed any 
miracle because He wanted to express what an able 
Being He was; He never spoke any doctrine because 
He wanted to show how wonderfully able His insight 
into God's truth was; He never did anything from 
Himself; He always did it from His Father. [At the 
foot of the outline is a note about the pre-existence 



88 Biblical Psychology. 

of our Lord. (John 17:5.) That pre-existence is 
quite different from the phase of pre-existence just 
mentioned. This is the existence of the Being known 
before He came here, and the reason of His being 
here is explained by what He was before He came 
here. This is the only case of the pre-existence of a 
person in a former life. The Bible, then, nowhere 
teaches that individuals existed in a world before 
they came here. The true existence is the existence 
in the Divine mind.] 

Then take (c) the steadying Scriptures, by which I 
mean those that hold our minds to some steady line 
of interpretation. 

(1) No "Soul" before the body. (Gen. 1 and 2.) 
The Bible reveals that the soul in the CREATION of 
man came second, not first. The body existed before 
the soul in creation, so you cannot trace the history or 
the destiny of a human soul before the human race. 
•.That is the first main general line of revelation. There 
you have a splendid example of the pre-existence that is 
true God deliberately said what was in His mind 
before He created the body of man — "Let us make 
man in our own image," the pre-existence of Adam 
in the mind of God. 

(2) No "Soul" destiny pre-Adamic. (Rom. 5 : 12.) 
The soul destiny here begins with the human race, 
not before it. Some may say we believe that there 
was no soul before body in the first creation; but 
what about ourselves? Take any passage that deals 
with individual destiny — Ezekiel 18, for instance — and 
you will find that destiny is determined in the life- 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 89 

time of that individual soul. Transmigration specula- 
tions are all alien to the Bible teaching. 

(3) No -"Soul" but by pro-creation. That is that 
we are not created direct by the hand of the Almighty 
as Adam was. We are pro-created, generated, and our 
body, soul and spirit come together in embryo, as re- 
lated elsewhere. 

All these speculations come right down to our lives 
In a very enticing manner. Telepathy is the espec- 
ially enticing way that this speculation of transmigra- 
tion and pre-existence introduces itself to our minds. 
Now telepathy simply means being able to discern 
some one else's thought by my own. Immediately 
you get there, you have the line of auto-sugges- 
tion, and if one man can suggest thoughts to another 
man, then Satan can do the same thing, and the con- 
sciousness of it on the human side opens the mind 
to it diabolically. Why we mention telepathy is 
because all these things come right down to us 
in the most harmless phases. Spiritualism comes to 
us in the way of palmistry, reading fortunes in tea- 
cups, or in cards, planchette, etc. People say there 
is no harm in that. There is all the harm and "back- 
ing up" of the devil behind the whole thing. Noth- 
ing awakens the curiosity quicker than reading for- 
tunes in tea-cups, and nothing will awaken insatiable 
curiosity like reading fortunes by cards. The same 
thing with all these theosophic speculations ; they come 
right down on the line of things that have been 
wrongly called by the name of " psychology.' ' 

2. Present Existence. Here we come down on to 



90 Biblical Psychology. 

plain, simple ground where we are at home. In the 
last chapter you remember we dealt with something of 
the nature of the complex characteristics of the soul, 
perplexing and whirling and confusing the more you 
think of them. When you begin to think of the 
possibilities of the human soul, there is no clear thought 
possible, at first. We come now to all the possibilities 
and capacities of the soul. Can these be satisfied here ? 
The Bible says they can; the whole claim of the sal- 
vation of Jesus Christ is that the Spirit of God can 
satisfy our human soul's last aching abyss, and not 
hereafter only, but here and now. Satisfaction does 
not mean stagnation; it means the knowledge that I 
have gotten to the right type of life for my soul. 

(a) Satisfaction of the Soul. (Psa. 66:9, 12, 16; 
Isa. 55:3.) These are simply indications of innumer- 
able passages in God's Book which go to prove that the 
complex soul which we have been facing can be satis- 
fied and placed in perfect harmony with itself and 
with God in this present existence. To think that 
the human soul can fulfill the whole predestined pur- 
pose of God, is a great thought. It can be stagnated 
by ignorance; when we begin we are content to be 
ignorant ; we do not know the capabilities of our lives ; 
when we begin to get conviction of sin, we under- 
stand the awful, unfathomable depths of our lives ; and 
the claim of the Bible is that God can satisfy this 
abyss; and every one who knows first of all, what 
his human soul is capable of, the possibilities and 
terrors of it, and knows also that Jesus Christ can 
satisfy that soul, will bear equal testimony with the 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 91 

written Word of God that He can satisfy the living 
soul in the present. Isaiah 55:3 is our Lord's mes- 
sage to the age we live in. "We must bear in mind 
that the devil does satisfy, for a time. Read Psalm 
73: " Their eyes stand out with fatness, they have all 
that heart can desire." "They have no changes, and 
they do not fear God," says another Psalm. 

(b) Sins and Surroundings of the Soul. (We are 
not taking all the passages given in the chart, only one 
or two to indicate the line of thought.) Psalm 6; 
this refers to the surroundings of the soul with re- 
gard to bodily sickness and perplexity, and the in- 
ward results. The first degree of prayer is, "Heal 
me for my bones are vexed." The second degree is, 
"Heal me for my soul is also sore vexed," and the 
third degree is, "Save me for Thy mercy's sake." 
There are three degrees of pain in the soul arising 
from its surroundings, (1) perplexity because of pain, 
(2) because its mental outlook is cloudy, and (3) be- 
cause God has not said a word. When you get 
the body perplexed (and you certainly will if 
you are going on with God — because you are a 
mark for Satan), and when the sudden onslaught 
comes, as it did for instance in Job's life, you 
will cry, "Heal me because of my pain," and there 
is no answer. "Heal me, not because I am in pain, 
but my soul is perplexed, I cannot see any way out 
of it why this thing should be ; " still no answer. c c Heal 
me, Lord, not because of my pain, not because my 
soul is sick, but for Thy sake." These surround- 
ings of the soul, the scenes that arise from our 



92 Biblical Psychology. 

doings, produce perplexity and danger to the soul; 
you cannot separate your soul from your body, and the 
bodily perplexities produce difficulties, and the diffi- 
culties go inward and at times intrude right to the 
very throne of God in your heart. 

(Ezek. 18 : 4.) In this passage the connection of 
the soul life and sin that is punished, is clearly stated. 
The disposition of sin inherited is to be cleansed, but 
every sin I commit I am punished for. (1 Pet. 1:9.) 
That word salvation refers to the whole " gamut 7 ' 
of a man, spirit, soul and body; Christ the first- 
fruits, with the ultimate reach in the hereafter of 
spirit, soul and body like His in a totally new re- 
lationship. The soul in the present life is satisfied in all 
perplexities, and in all onslaughts and dangers is kept 
by the power of God. Sins destroy the power of 
the soul to kn-ow its sins, punishment brings awaken- 
ing, and self-examination brings chastisement and 
saves the soul from sleeping sickness, and brings it 
into healthy satisfaction. (1 Cor. 11 : 31.) 

Now about (c) the supernatural side of the souPs 
life. (Luke 9:54-56.) These men had known enough 
of the Lord Jesus Christ to know that He had in- 
timacy with supernatural powers, and it is quite 
possible to scathe sin and serve your own self at the 
same time, as they did, doing right in fhe wrong 
spirit. [These were the very men who, a little while 
afterwards, asked that they might be placed one on 
the right hand and the other on the left; and one 
of them (see Acts 8) was sent down by God to Samaria, 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 93 

where he realized what the fire was that God was 
going to send, the fire of the Holy Ghost.] 

(Eph. 6:12.) That has not to do with what we 
consider our body side of things, it has to do with 
the supernatural. We are surrounded immediately 
by powers and forces which we cannot discern phys- 
ically. 

(1 Cor. 10:20, 21.) You will always know your 
spiritually minded Christians by their attitude to 
the supernatural. For instance, the modern attitude 
to demon possession is instructive. So many take 
the attitude that there is no such thing as demon 
possession, inferring that Jesus Christ Himself knew 
quite well that there was no such thing; not seeing 
that by such an attitude they put themselves in the 
place of the superior person, and claim to know all 
the private opinions of the Almighty about iniquity. 
Jesus unquestionably did believe in the fact of de- 
mon possession. The New Testament is full from 
beginning to end of the supernatural. Jesus Christ 
continually looked on scenery we do not see; He 
continually saw and understood supernatural forces 
and persons at work. "Test the spirits whether they 
be of God or men." The soul of man may be vastly 
complicated by interference from the supernatural, 
but Jesus Christ can guard us here. 

Sickness, natural and demoniacal. "We mean by 
natural the sickness that has come about by nat- 
ural causes, not by the interference of any supernatural 
force. The second arise when certain organs of the 
body are infested by demons. Read the records of 



94 Biblical Psychology. 

our Lord casting out demons. He said sometimes, 
"Come out, thou dumb and deaf demon ;" again He 
said nothing about demons to other deaf and dumb 
people as He healed them. You will find all through 
God's Book references to demoniacal sickness, where 
certain organs of the body are possessed, and Jesus in 
addressing them mentions the particular organ. The 
third kind of sickness is instanced in the man of 6a- 
dara who was possessed by a legion of demons, not 
only in organs but all through his body. (How much 
room does thought take up? None! How many 
thoughts can I have in my brain? Why, countless! 
How much room does a spiritual personality take up? 
How many personalities may be in one body? Take the 
man of Gadara, Jesus said, "How many are ye?" 
"Legion !") The other case is that of Judas, the identi- 
fication of a human soul with the devil himself. Just as 
a man may become identified with the Lord Jesus 
Christ, so he can be identified with the devil. Just as a 
man can be born again into the kingdom where Jesus 
lives and moves and has His being, and become iden- 
tified with Him by entire sanctification, so a man 
can be born again, so to speak, into the devil's king- 
dom, and can be entirely consecrated to the devil. 
"Satan entered into Judas." Jesus said, "Have not 
I chosen twelve, and one of you is a devil?" The 
subject awakens tremendous terrors, but these are facts 
revealed in God's Book. There are natural sicknesses 
and supernatural sicknesses of the human soul and 
body in this present life, and Jesus Christ can deal 
with them all, natural or supernatural. 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 95 

3. Perpetual Existence. 

(a) The Mortal Aspect of the Soul. (Job 14:2; 
Jas. 4: 14.) "We mean by mortal, only in this order of 
things. You will find all through God's Book that 
the soul and the presence of a man as he appears 
just now is described as mortal in one aspect. The 
soul is the holder of the body and spirit together, 
and when the spirit has gone back to God who gave 
it, the soul goes with the body. But in the resur- 
rection there is another body, a glorified body, a body 
impossible to describe in words, either a glorified 
or a damnation body, and instantly you have the 
soul life manifested again. (See John 5 : 28, 29.) We 
have a picture of the resurrected damned body, yet our 
Lord states the fact. We have a picture of the res- 
urrected glorified body of the saints in the resur- 
rected body of our Lord. (Phil. 3 : 21.) The soul life, 
then, is entirely dependent on the body. The in- 
delible characteristics of the individual are in his 
spirit, and our Lord, who became the firstfruits, 
was spirit, soul and body. Therefore resurrection 
is not of spirit — personality — (that never dies) but 
of body and soul. God raises an incorruptible glo- 
rified body like unto His own, " every man in his 
own regiment' ' and Jesus Christ leading. Just as 
during those forty resurrection days, our Lord's glori- 
fied body could materialize, so will ours be able to in the 
"day" yet to be. In Luke 16 : 25-29, reference is made 
to the resurrection of damnation, and the resurrection 
to eternal life. If the mortal aspect is strong in the 
Bible, the immortal aspect (b) is just as strong. The 



96 Biblical Psychology. 

annihilationists build all their teaching on what we 
have said just now ; they give proof after proof that the 
soul and body are mortal, and that the only person 
who is everlasting is the person who is born again 
of the Spirit; but the Bible says there is everlast- 
ing damnation as well as everlasitng life. Nothing 
can be annihilated. "Destroy" never means "annihi- 
late ' ' in Scripture language. Our soul is mortal in this 
present bodily aspect, but it is immortal in another 
aspect of God's truth, for He sees soul in its final con- 
nection with spirit in resurrection. Luke 16 : 25, 26 
and Luke 23 : 43 both have reference to the state im- 
mediately after death, and reveal that the spirit of a 
man, the personality of a man, never sleeps, and 
never dies in the sense that his body and soul do. 
Here the "soul sleep" heresy creeps in. The Bible 
nowhere says the soul sleeps. The Bible referring 
to this order of things reveals the body as asleep, but 
never the personality. The Lord Jesus emphatically 
showed that the second after death, unhindered con- 
sciousness is the state. 

(c) Eternal Life and Eternal Death. (Matt. 10: 
28 ; Rom. 5 : 21 ; 6 : 23.) We have no more ground for 
saying there is eternal life than we have for saying 
there is eternal death. If Jesus Christ meant by eter- 
nal life, unending conscious knowledge of God ever 
increasing, then eternal death is never-ending con- 
scious separation from God. The destruction of a soul 
in Hades or Hell is the destruction of the last strand 
of likeness to God. Mark uses a very strange word, 
he says "salted by fire," preserved in eternal death. 



Soul, Its Past, Present, and Future. 97 

Romans 8:6 t-eHs us w4ia«t eternal death is — "car- 
nal mindedness." Those verses on death and life 
are easily solvable. The people who say that eter- 
nal damnation is not personal, but that eternal life 
is, have put themselves in a most ridiculous posi- 
tion. We know no more about the one than we know 
about the other, and we know nothing about either 
saving what the Lord Jesus Christ has told us. Prob- 
ably the greatest book that ever was written, outside 
the Bible, on "Human Personality and Its Survival 
of Bodily Death" was written during the last few 
years by a # great man, and he tries to prove, outside 
God's Book, simply by speculation, that the human 
soul is immortal, and he ends exactly where he begins, 
viz., with his intuition. All we know about "Hell," 
all we know about damnation and eternal life, the 
Bible alone has given to us, and if we go "off" and 
say "God is unjust" because He teaches perennial 
"death" (and say therefore He can never have taught 
it), we have put ourselves exactly under the condem- 
nation that God gives in those passages in Deuter- 
onomy and Revelation. The mortal aspect is that 
the soul, as merely the expression of spirit, dis- 
appears, as we know it, when th*j body dies. These 
things transcend reason, but they do not contradict 
the nature of reason; they are simply divine revela- 
tions of our Lord Jesus Christ, and He is the only 
being who is the final authority. 

All we can have hoped to do in these studies of 
the human soul is to have suggested lines of research 
for the Bible student. 



CHAPTER IX. 
HEART: THE RADICAL REGION OF LIFE. 

1 CENTRE OF THE PHYSICAL LIFE. 

(a) "Lifeless" Objects. Deut. 5: 11; Matt. 12: 40; Jon. 
2: 3; Ezek. 26: 4, 25-27. 

(b) Lowest Life-Power. Gen. 18: 5; Judg. 19: 5. 

(c) Life-Power. Ps. 38: 10, 11; Luke 21: 34. 

(d) Life of the Whole Person. Acts 14: 17; Jas. 5: 5. 

2 CENTRE OF PRACTICAL LIFE. 

(a) Emporium. Ps. 5:9; 49:11; 1 Pet. 3:4. 

(b) Export. Mark 7:21, 22; Esth. 7:5. 

(c) Import. Acts 5:3; 16:14; 2 Cor. 4:6. 

N. B. The relative position of Head and Heart in the Bible 
and Modern Thought will be explained. "The head 
is to the external appearance what the heart is to 
the internal agency of the soul." 

1. Centre of Physical Life. 

We will deal first with, the N. B. on the chart. 
In the Bible the heart is made to be the centre of 
thinking, not the brain, and for a long while mental 
science has differed from the Bible. It has main- 
tained a steady opposition to the Bible standpoint. 
But modern psychologists are coming round slowly 
now to find that the best way to explain the facts of 
conscious life is to revise previous unbiblical " find- 
ings." 

Physically, remember that the heart is the first 
thing to live, and the Bible finds in the heart 
all the active factors that we have been apt to 
place in the brain. The brain is simply the head- 

98 



Region of Life. 99 

piece, the true indicator of what the heart is. In the 
mystical body of Christ, Christ is not called the heart ; 
Christ is called the head. (Eph. 5:23; Col. 2:19; 
1 Cor. 11:3.) Now, if the head is to be the exact 
outward expression of the heart, how can sin have 
any part in the mystical body of Christ? That is, 
how can people who are not rightly related to God, 
whose inward disposition has not been changed, how 
can they be part of the body of Christ, if Christ is 
the head and true expression of what that body is, 
especially in the centre of its life? 

The head has the prominence of all blessings in 
the Old and New Testaments, simply because it is the 
outward expression of the condition of the heart. 
(Gen. 48:14; 49:26; Prov. 10:6; Ps. 132:2; Lev. 8.) 
You find also statements about the countenance ; which 
does not only mean the face and front of the head; 
but the whole carriage of the person that is external 
in expression: and the countenance becomes the true 
mirror of what the heart is like, when the heart has 
had time enough to manifest its true life. (With regard 
to the countenance being the mirror, see Ex. 34 : 29 ; 
Matt. 17:2; 2 Cor. 3:13; Isa. 3:9; 2 Sam. 17:11.) 

The Bible does not put the head in the central 
position, it puts it in the prominent position, on 
the top; the head is the final finish off, the man- 
ifestation of what the heart is like. The head is the 
outwarcl expression, as the tree is the outward expres- 
sion of what the root is like. That is the relation- 
ship between head and heart in the Bible. 



100 Heart: The Radical 

The materialistic scientists say that "the brain 
secretes thinking like the liver does bile." They 
have made the brain the centre of thinking. The Bi- 
ble makes the heart the centre of thinking and the 
brain merely the machinery the heart uses to express 
itself. That is a very vital point in our judgment 
of men. For instance, Carlyle represents the judg- 
ment of men who do not accept the Bible standpoint. 
He judged men by brains, and consequently said the 
majority of the human race were fools. 

God never judges men by brains; they are judged 
by heart. 

The heart, then, is the true centre of living, and 
the true centre of all vital activities of body, soul, 
and spirit. 

When the apostle Paul refers to believing with 
the heart, he means a great deal more than we are 
apt to mean. The Bible always means more than 
we are apt to mean. The Bible term "heart" means 
the particular centre on which everything turns, in 
every way and in every detail. The human soul has 
the spirit in and above it; the body by and about it; 
but the vital centre is the heart. 

The passages under section 1 simply mean that 
the Bible points out that the centre of everything is 
its heart. "When we speak of the heart, either figur- 
atively or really, we speak of the mid-most part of a 
person. "Where we differ in our Bible teaching from 
secular mental science is, that we make the heart 
the soul-centre and the spirit-centre also. 

One of the greatest dangers in dealing with the 



Region of Life. 101 

Bible is to exploit it, that is, to come to it with a 
preconceived idea, and take things out of it only 
what agree with that idea. If you try, as has been 
tried by psychologists, to take out of it something 
that agrees with modern psychology, you will find 
that you always have to omit everything the Bible 
says about the heart. The heart is the centre, the cen- 
tre of the physical life, it is the centre of memory, 
the centre of damnation and the centre of salvation, 
the centre of God's working, and the centre of the 
devil's working, the centre from which everything 
works that moulds the human mechanism. 

(c) Life Power. (Ps. 38:10, 11; Luke 21:34.) 
These passages are typical of many more where the 
heart is made the centre of all life power, physical 
and otherwise. Anything that makes the heart move 
or beat quicker physically always works towards 
higher or lower manifestations, and you will find 
our Lord Jesus Christ produces the kind of in- 
fluence that alters the heart life at once. Some peo- 
ple you come in contact with freeze you (so to speak), 
you cannot think, things do not "go", you feel every- 
thing "tight" and "mean"; you come into the zone 
of other people and all those "bands" have gone, you 
are surprised at how clearly you can think, everything 
seems to "go" better. You feel better and you take 
a deep breath and say, "Why, I feel quite different; 
what has happened?" The one personality brought 
an atmosphere that "froze" the heart not only phys- 
ically, but psychically, kept it cold, kept it down, kept 
it back; the other gave it a chance to expand, and 



102 Heart: The Radical 

develop, and surge again throughout the whole body. 

(Take it in the lowest physical domain. If people 
knew that circulation of the blood and the quicken- 
ing of the heart life would move distempers from the 
body, there would be a great deal less medicine taken 
and a great deal more walking done.) 

The heart is indeed the centre for all the physical 
life and all the imaginations that the mind works. 
Anything that keeps the physical blood in a good 
condition and keeps the heart circulating in a proper 
way, will always benefit the soul and spirit life as 
well. That is why Jesus Christ says, "Be careful 
that you do not get your heart (that includes phys- 
ical heart as well) surfeited by the wrong things." 
Whenever certain kinds of sins are mentioned they 
are called idolatry. "Covetousness" is called idolatry 
because every drop of blood in a covetous man's life 
is drawn away from God physically, and spiritually. 
The same thing with sensuality, with drunkenness, and 
with vengeance (vengeance is probably the most tyran- 
nical passion of the carnal mind). The first wonder- 
ful thing done by the new life given to us by the 
Holy Spirit is to loosen the heart, and as we obey 
the Spirit in the life, it leads in each detail nearer 
and nearer to what God has for us, and the mani- 
festations become easier. Satan, however, is as subtle 
as God is good, and he will counterfeit everything God 
does, and, if he cannot counterfeit it, he will limit it. 
Do not be ignorant of his devices ! 

(d) Life of the "Whole Person. (Acts 14:17; Jas. 
5:5.) There is indication given of the power of our 



Region of Life. 103 

heart-life. If our hearts are right with God, we are 
able to realize what is mentioned in the first passage, 
that everything nourishes and blesses the whole life 
all through. The other indicates the bad side. "We 
can develop in the heart life what we will, if we 
only put our hearts in the right condition, or the 
wrong one. There is no limit to the growth and de- 
velopment. If we give over to meanness and to 
Satan, there is no end to our growth in devil- 
ishness; if we give ourselves over to God openly, 
there is no end whatever to our development and 
growth in grace. Our Lord has no dread about con- 
sequences, when once the heart is open towards Him. 
No wonder the Bible counsels us to " guard our 
heart, ' ' for out of it are the issues of life ; no wonder 
Solomon prayed for " enlargement of heart/' and no 
wonder Paul says that the peace of God will "garrison 
our hearts. " 

2. Centre of Practical Life. 

The Emporium, The Export, and The Import. 

(Ps. 5:9.) The phrase "inward part" there is 
simply a translated phrase for heart.. (Ps. 49:11.) 
There again the "inward thought' ' is heart entirely. 
(1 Pet. 3:4.) That is the "great exchange and mart" 
in your life and mine ; words and expressions are sim- 
ply the coins we use, but the shop resides in the heart, 
the emporium, where all the goods are, and that 
is what God can see and no man can. That is 
why Jesus Christ's judgment always confuses us 
until we learn how to receive, recognize and rely 



104 Heart: The Radical 

on the Holy Spirit. The way people judged Jesus in 
His day is the way we judge Him to-day. The way 
the critics judge the Bible and the way the crit- 
ics judge Jesus is an indication of what the heart 
is if any man has not received the Holy Spirit. 
When once we receive the Holy Spirit, what hap- 
pens to you and me is that we get to the condition 
of the disciples after the resurrection; their eyes 
were opened and they discerned things, that is, they 
had power to discern what they saw before. Be- 
fore they received the Spirit they could not per- 
ceive correctly. They simply recorded physically, 
they simply saw that Jesus Christ was a marvel- 
ous being whom they believed to be the Mes- 
siah, but when they received the Holy Ghost, received 
the Spirit life, they discerned what they saw, they 
discerned what they heard, they discerned what they 
had been handling. Why? Because the heart had 
been put right, the whole shop inside had been reno- 
vated and restocked by the Spirit of God. 

Notice the characteristic of a man who makes 
his head the centre, and the characteristic of the 
New Testament being who makes the heart the 
centre. The man who makes the head the centre 
becomes an intellectual being, that is he does not esti- 
mate things at all like the Bible characters do; sin, 
to him, is a mere defect, something to be overlooked 
and grown out of, and the one thing he despises is 
an enthusiast. Take the apostle Paul, or any New 
Testament character, you will find the characteristic 
of the life is enthusiasm ; the heart is first, not second, 



Region of Life. 105 

the antipodes of modern life, if the modern life is 
intellectual. Intellectuality leads to bloodlessness and 
passionlessness and stoicism and unreality; you will 
find that the more and more intellectual a person be- 
comes the more and more hopelessly useless he be- 
comes, such degenerate into mere critical faculties, 
and they pass the strangest and wildest verdicts on 
life, on the Bible and on the Lord Jesus Christ. 

(b) Export. (Mark 7:21.) This passage is de- 
testable to an intellectual person, it is in absolute bad 
taste, and nine out of twelve people do not believe 
it, because they are grossly ignorant about their heart. 
Jesus Christ says, to put it in modern language, " There 
has no crime ever been committed that every human 
being is not capable of committing." Do I believe 
that? do you? If not, remember we pass a verdict 
straight off on the Lord Jesus Christ, we say He does 
not know what He is talking about. Jesus said He 
"knew what was in man/' meaning He knew his heart, 
and the apostle Paul emphasizes the same thing. ' ' Don 't 
you trust any man/' he says in effect, "only the grace 
of God in yourself and in other people." No wonder 
Jesus Christ pleads with us to give the charge of our 
hearts over to Him so that He can fill them with a 
new life, and every characteristic seen in Jesus Christ's 
life becomes possible in mine when once I have handed 
my heart over to Him to be filled with the Holy Spirit. 
"We are not capable of guarding our own hearts, the 
Bible says we are not. 

(c) Import. (Acts 5:3.) That is a terrible 
statement, a statement with a shudder all through, 



106 Biblical Psychology. 

viz., a Pentecostal liar, a lie that has never been 
mentioned before in that particular profundity, but 
it is mentioned here because it is the part of the 
heart to actually try to deceive the Holy Ghost. Peter 
says, "You have not lied to men; you have lied to 
God. Satan hath filled thine heart. " In 2 Corinthians 
4 : 6, our Lord undertakes to fill the whole region of 
the heart with light and love and beauty and holi- 
ness. Can He do it? First of all, do I realize that 
I need it done? Or do I think I can "realize myself" 
(that is the phrase to-day, it is growing in popular- 
ity, "I must realize myself")? If I want to know 
what my heart is like, let me listen to my mouth (in 
an unguarded frame), for five minutes! 

Thank God for everyone of us who has been saved 
from that perilous path by yielding ourselves over to 
the Lord, and asking Him to give us the Holy Spirit 
and obeying the light He gives! 



CHAPTER X. 

HEART: THE RADICAL REGION OF LIFE. 

THE RADIATOR OP PERSONAL LIFE. 

1 VOLTTNTAKY. 

(a) Determination. Ex. 35:21; Esth. 7:5; Eccl. 8:11; 
2 Cor. 9: 7; Kom. 6: 17. 

(b) Design. 1 Kings 8:17, 18; 10:2; Ps. 21:2; Prov. 
6: 18; Isa. 10: 7; Acts 11: 23; Rom. 10: 1. 

2 VERSATILITY. 

(a) Perception. Deut. 29:4; Prov. 14:10; Isa. 32:4; 
Acts 16: 14. 

(b) *Meditation. Neh. 5:7; Luke 2:19; Isa. 33:18; 
Ps. 49: 3; Ps. 19: 14. 

*This includes deliberation and reflection. 

(c) Estimation. Prov. 16: 1, 9; 19: 21; Ps. 33: 10, 11. 

(d) Inclination. Deut. 32:46; Josh. 24:23; Deut. 11: 
18; Prov. 3: 3. 

3 VIRTUES AND VICES. 

(a) All Degrees of Joy. Isa. 65: 14; 66: 5; Acts 2: 46. 

(b) All Degrees of Pain. Prov. 25: 20; Ps. 109: 22; Acts 
21: 13; John 16: 6. 

(c) All Degrees of Ill-will. Prov. 23: 17; Deut. 19: 6; 
Acts 7: 54; Jas. 3:14. 

A radiator is "a body that emits rays of light 
and heat." I have used a purely mechanical term, 
because it exactly pictures what the heart is, it is 
the centre that emits rays of light and heat in the 
physical frame, in the soul and in the spirit. The 
heart physically is the centre of the body; the heart 
sentimentally is the centre of the soul; the heart 
spiritually is the centre of the spirit. 

107 



108 Biblical Psychology. 

A word about the three divisions in the chart. 
1, Voluntary, simply means acting by choice; choice 
is made in the heart, not in the head. By 2, Versa- 
tility, is meant the power to turn easily from one thing 
to another, and by 3, Virtues, moral excellencies, and 
by Vices, immoral conduct. 

1. The Voluntary Division. 

The act of choice springs from the heart the Bible 
says, and there are two things we must look at — 
one is determination, and the other is design, (a) 
Determination means to fix the form of the choice. 
(Ex. 35:21; Rom. 6:17.) These passages are an indi- 
cation of hundreds that prove from the Bible revelation 
that the act of choice is in the heart and not in the brain. 
Determination is not impulse. Impulse in anybody but 
a child is dangerous ; it is always the sign of an unstable 
and unreliable person. Determination is to fix the form 
of my choice. Now that means, both in praying and 
action, I have the power in my heart to fix the form 
my choice is to take, and God demands this of us 
when we pray. The majority of us waste our time 
by mere impulses in prayer. Meditate on that and 
you will find many verses in God's Book which refer 
to this power of the heart to choose voluntarily. Im- 
pulse is not choice; impulse is very similar to instinct 
in an animal. It is the characteristic of immaturity 
that ought not to be your characteristic or mine. 
"We may take it as a safe guide in spiritual mat- 
ters never to be guided by impulse in anything; 
to always take time to curb your impulses and bring 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 109 

them back and see what sort of form the choice would 
make based on that impulse. 

When the phrase, " Bringing every thought and im- 
agination into captivity" is taken in the full mean- 
ing, it means practically the harnessing of impulses. 
Thank God we have the power in our hearts to fix 
the form of our choice either for good or bad. No 
wonder the Bible tells us to guard our hearts, for 
out of them are the issues of our life. We never 
get credit for giving, impulsively, spiritually. If 
we suddenly feel •we ought to give a shilling to 
a poor man, and do it, we get no credit from God 
for it, there is no virtue in it whatever. # The majority 
of that sort of giving is a relief to the feelings, 
and is not an indication of a generous character, it 
is rather an indication of lack of it. God never esti- 
mates our gifts on the line of impulse. It is what 
we determine in our hearts to do that we get credit 
for; giving that is governed by a fixed determination. 
The Spirit of Go*d revolutionizes our philanthropic in- 
stincts. The majority of philanthropy is simply this 
impulse to save myself an uncomfortable feeling, by 
giving to the poor people. The Spirit of God alters 
the whole thing. My attitude to the poor, as a saint 
of God, is, "Give, for His sake," not any other 
motive. So with regard to everything, this power 
of voluntarily choosing in determining the form of 
our choice is the power in the human heart that God 
holds us responsible for using or not using. 

Then take (b) Design. Design means more than 
determination. Design means to plan in outline. 



110 Biblical Psychology. 

1 Kings 8 : 17, 18 is a typical case, and there are 
other verses that prove that God gives us credit for 
the design of our heart, not for the impulses of our 
hearts. He may never allow that design to be carried 
out, but He credits us with having the design. Some- 
times when you have had a very good dinner and 
feel remarkably good, you say, "If I only had a thou- 
sand pounds, what would I do with it!" You do 
not get credit for that, until what you do with what 
you have got, is considered. The proof that the de- 
sign for the thousand pounds would be worked out 
is what you do with what you have got. We can- 
not have designs in outline to please God, unless 
we have been working out in lesser degrees through 
our bodies, what God works in us to do. David 
had planned out in his heart what he would do for 
God, and, although God did not allow him to do it, 
God credited him with having the desire and de- 
sign and the plan in his heart. Thank God we have 
a God who deals with the designs of our hearts both, 
for good and for bad! Character is the whole trend 
of the man's life taken together, not an isolated act 
here and there. Remember, then, these two voluntary 
powers of the heart, viz., I have a power to fix the 
form of my choosing! "Delight thyself in the Lord; 
and He will give thee the desires of thine heart.' ' 
Desire embraces both determination and design. God 
deals with us on the line of character building. Some 
people, when they read that verse in Psalm 37, behave 
before God like people do with a wishing-bone over a 
Christmas dinner. They say, "Now I have read this 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. Ill 

verse, I wonder what I shall wish for?" That is not 
desire. Desire is what you have determined in out- 
line, in your mind, and planned out and settled in 
your heart, that is the desire God will fulfill if you 
delight in Him. 

2. Versatility. 

We describe that as being the power of turning 
from one thing to another. Now that, in the natural 
world, is called humor. The power to turn easily 
from one thing to another is owing to a sense of pro- 
portion. A "self-righting" lifeboat gives the idea. 
This is the power that sin destroyed in the spirit- 
ual people of God. Read Psalm 106: "Our fath- 
ers have sinned and we have sinned with them." 
How did they sin? They forgot what God did be- 
fore; they had not any power of turning from their 
present trying circumstances to the time when the 
circumstances were not trying, and consequently 
they sinned against God. We have a power to 
turn from deep anguish to deep joy in times of 
trial. Psalm 42:6: "My soul is cast down within 
me," therefore will I turn and remember something 
else. There are some people who have the character- 
istic of being merry, and they think they must always 
keep up that "role." There are some people who 
have taken on the character of being great sufferers, 
and, having taken up that "role," they never turn 
from it. In the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, you 
will always find the basal balance of this quality; also 
take the apostle Paul's argument in Romans 8: "All 
Tthese things work together for good." You have to 



112 Biblical Psychology. 

take all these things when put "together," not in bits. 

If your circumstances are trying just now, remem- 
ber the time when they were not trying, and you 
will find that the " self-righting " power is given all 
through, and you will be surprised when once you 
realize the enormous power of turning from one thing 
to another in the human heart. How much misery 
a human heart can stand, and how much joy! but if 
you lose the power of turning, you will upset the 
balance. God's Spirit restores and keeps this balance. 

(a) Perception. That means the power of discern- 
ment, I wonder how many of us have the power of per- 
ception ! (Deut. 29 : 4 ; Prov. 14 : 10.) In the first ease the 
power of perception is in the heart. Perception means 
the power to discern what I hear, what I see, and what 
I read ; the power to discern the history of the nation I 
belong to, and the pow r er to discern my personal life. 
How many of us have the power to "hear with our 
ears" according to Jesus Christ's statement? Jesus 
said, "He that hath ears to hear let him hear." You 
have got to have the power of perception to interpret 
what you hear in God 's light. Isaiah puts it very strong- 
ly in chapter 53: "Who hath believed the thing we are 
all saying and to whom is the arm of the Lord re- 
vealed?" That is, "Who has the power to discern 
the arm of the Lord?" We all see the common oc- 
currences of our daily life, but who amongst us can 
perceive the arm of the Lord behind them, who can 
perceive behind the thunder, the voice of God? Re- 
member Jesus Christ (John 12). The people said it 
thundered, but Jesus said His Father spoke to Him. 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 113 

"What is the difference? The One had perception, the 
others had not. The light that smote Saul on the way 
to Damascus staggered and amazed the other men, 
but they saw nothing in it. Saul knew it was the 
Lord, and said, "Who art thou, Lord?" Why? The 
one had the power of perception and the others had 
not. The characteristic of a man without the Spirit 
of God is that he has not the power of perception; 
that is, he cannot perceive God's working behind the 
ordinary occurrences. That is the marvelous, uncrush* 
able characteristic of a saint. 

You may put the saint in tribulation, you may put 
the saint amid an onslaught of "principalities and 
powers/ ' you may put the saint in peril, pestilence, 
under sword, you may put the saint anywhere you 
like and Paul says he is more than conqueror. Why! 
Because his heart being filled with God can always 
turn in the perceiving way to understand that behind 
all these things "working together for good" is God! 
How may of us have our ears open? 

"Keep mine eyes from beholding vanity." That 
does not mean "keep my eyes shut," but "give me 
a power of perception to direct my eyes aright." A 
sheet of white paper can be soiled, a sunbeam can- 
not, and God keeps His saints like light. 

Oh, the power of full-orbed righteousness! Thank 
God for the sanity of His salvation! He gets hold 
of us in our hearts, not our heads! (b), Medita- 
tion means getting to the middle of a thing. Medi- 
tation does not mean to be like a pebble in a brook 
letting the water of thought go over you, that is 



114 Biblical Psychology. 

reverie, not meditation. Meditation is the most intense 
spiritual activity that brings every part of the body 
into harness, and concentrates its powers to profit. 
This includes deliberation and reflection. Now delib- 
eration means that I am able to weigh well what 
I am thinking of, conscious all the time that I am de- 
liberating and meditating. Neh. 5:7: "I thought 
within myself," is exactly the meaning of medita- 
tion. Luke 2 : 19 is the meaning of meditation also. 
Please note, meditation is not prayer! A great 
many delightful modern people mistake meditation for 
prayer. Meditation is simply the power I have in my 
natural heart to get to the centre of a thing, and all 
this talk in pseudo-scientific circles about prayer be- 
ing a reflex action is foolish. Meditation has a reflex 
action, but that is not prayer. 

Prayer is definite talk to God, about which God 
has put an atmosphere, and by which I get answers 
back. Meditation very often accompanies prayer, but 
meditation is not prayer. Men can meditate who have 
not an ounce of the Spirit of God in them, and. this fun- 
damental distinction is obscured over and over again, 
by teachers to-day. We read that Mary meditated, she 
got right to the centre of all the thought about her Son, 
and she never said a word about it to anybody as 
far as we know; yet read John's Gospel, and a won- 
der will occur to you. St. Augustine called John's 
Gospel the " Heart of Jesus Christ." Recall what 
Jesus said to John about His own mother, "Son, be- 
hold thy mother," and wtat Jesus said to Mary about 
John, "Woman, behold thy son," and from that hour 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 115 

John took Mary to his own home. It is quite legit- 
imate to think that Mary's meditations found mar- 
velous expression under the guidance of the Spirit of 
God to John, and may have found expression in John's 
Gospel and Epistles. 

(c) Estimation. Estimate simply means reckon- 
ing the value of. (Prov. 16:1-9.) God alters our 
estimates, we make our estimates in the heart. Let 
me put it down practically; those of you who have 
received God's Spirit and understand and know ex- 
perimentally God's grace, watch how He has altered 
your estimate of things. It used to matter a lot what 
your worldly crowd thought about you, how much 
does it matter now? You used to estimate highly the 
good opinion of certain people, how do you estimate 
it now? You used to estimate that immoral conduct 
was the worst crime on earth, how do you estimates 
pride now? "We get horrified at immoral conduct in 
social life, how many of us get as horrified at pride 
as Jesus Christ was? How many of us begin to under- 
stand what Jesus meant when He said you are "whited 
sepulchres, a generation of vipers"? To whom was 
He talking? He was talking to Pharisees ! God alters 
our estimates, and, you will find God is giving you a 
deeper horror of carnality than ever He gave you 
of ordinary immorality, a deeper horror of the pride 
that lifts itself against God ancl lives clean among 
men, than any other thing. God alters our hearts 
all along the line, and God will alter your estimates 
about honor. Every man has honor of some sort, 
a thief has an honor, a gambling man has an honor. 



116 Biblical Psychology. 

everybody has an honor of a sort, Jesus Christ had an 
honor, you may call Him a glutton and a wine bibber, 
you may call Him licentious, you may call Him mad, 
you may call Him possessed with a devil, but His 
mouth is shut, "He made Himself of no reputation;" 
but once you touch His Father's honor, and all is dif- 
ferent. "Watch His first public ministry in Jerusalem, 
a "whip of small cords" overturning the money- 
changers ' tables and driving men and cattle out. 
Why? His Father's honor was at stake. "Where is 
the meek and mild and gentle Jesus now? 

The estimate of my honor measures my growth in 
grace. "What I will stand up for proves what my 
character is. If I stand up for my own reputation, 
it is a sign that it needs standing up for. God never 
stands up for His saints, they do not need it. The 
devil tells lies, but no slander on earth can alter a 
man's character; once let them slander God's honor, 
and you instantly find something else to deal with 
in your meek saint. You could not arouse them on 
their own account, but once you begin to slander God 
and you have awakened this sense of honor — a new 
estimate. We are able to have God's estimate. God 
help us to get to the right perspective, to get to ths 
place where we will understand and estimate that the 
things that are seen are temporal, ever holding a right 
scale of judgment. 

3. Virtues and Vices. 

(a) All Degrees of Joy. Joy resides in the heart. 
The Bible nowhere speaks about a happy Christian; 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 117 

happiness depends on what happens, Christian joy 
does not. 

(The Bible talks plentifully about joy, and I want 
to give you one warning about the effect of Christian 
Science. Mentally, there is not the slightest objection 
to what Christian Science does to people's bodies, "but 
there is a tremendous objection to what it does to 
people's minds. Its result in people's minds is to 
make them intolerably indifferent to physical suffer- 
ing, it produces the antipodes of the Christian charac- 
ter, viz., hard and callous in time.) All degrees of 
joy reside in the heart. How can a Christian be full 
of happiness, (if happiness means depending on things 
that happen,) when he is in a world where people are 
going wrong, where the devil is doing his best to 
twist souls, where people are tortured physically, where 
some people are downtrodden and do not get a chance? 
It would be the outcome of the most miserable selfish- 
ness to be happy under such conditions, but joyful- 
ness is never touched by external conditions, and a 
joyful heart is never an insult. Beware of preaching 
the gospel of temperament instead of the Gospel of 
God. There are any number of people to-day preach- 
ing the gospel of temperament, the gospel of " cheer 
up." Remember, Jesus Christ had joy, He was filled 
with joy. The word "blessedness" is sometimes 
translated happiness, but it is a very much deeper word 
than our word, happiness ; it includes all that is meant 
in joy in its full fruition. Happiness is the sign of a 
child 's life, and God condemns us for taking happiness 
out of a child's life, but we should have done with 



118 Biblical Psychology. 

happiness long ago, we are men and women who can 
face the stern issues of life knowing that the grace 
of God is sufficient for every problem the devil can 
present. 

(b) All Degrees of Pain. (Prov. 25:20). This 
is simply what has been stated already, preaching the 
gospel of temperament, the gospel of cheer up, when 
a person cannot cheer up, telling him to look on the 
bright side of things. It is just like telling a jelly 
fish to listen to an oratorio of Handel's, it cannot, it 
has to be made all over again first; so to tell a man 
to cheer up when he is convicted of sin by God, is 
just as futile. "What he needs is the grace of God 
inside to alter him so that he can have this well- 
spring of joy. Pain exists in the heart and not 
anywhere else. We try to aggregate and measure 
pain in the mass, we cannot. "When there is a great 
accident and hundreds get killed, we are horrified, 
much more horrified than at one man getting killed. 
There is no such thing as pain in the mass, that mass 
of pain is individual and nobody can feel more pain than 
the acme of nerves will give, and the more physical 
expression through pain, the less pain. It is through 
refusal to estimate things in the right lights that we 
misunderstand the direction of pain. 

(c) All Degrees of 111 Will. The deepest-rooted 
vice in the human soul is vengeance ; drunkenness and 
sensuality and covetousness are deep, but they do not 
go as deep as revenge. It is some such thought as 
that, that explains Judas. Read the record of Ju- 
das, it says that he "kissed Jesus much/'and then 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 119 

we read of the remorse of Judas, but there was no 
repentance, in our sense of the word; the whole 
end of the man's life was reached, there was 
nothing more to live for. There are records over 
and over again that a man who commits murder after 
a long line of vengeance, dies of a broken heart, not 
because he is penitent, but because he has no more 
to live for. 

It is the deepest-rooted passion in the human soul 
and the very impersonation of it is Satan, he has an ab- 
solute, clear detestation of God, an immortal hatred 
of God Almighty. He is at the summit of all sins, we 
are at the base of all. If it has not reached its awful 
height in us yet, it will, unless we let God alter the 
springs of our hearts. 

Thank God He alters the heart, and when He puts 
His new life in the heart, we can work it out through 
the head, and in the expression of the life ! 



CHAPTER XL 
HEART: THE RADICAL REGION OF LIFE. 

THE RADIATOR OF PERSONAL LIFE. (Continuel.) 

1 VOLUNTABY. 

(c) Love. 1 Tim. 1:5; Prov. 23:26; Judg. 5:9; Phil. 
1: 7; 2 Cor. 7:3. 

(d) Hate. Lev. 19: 17; Ps. 105: 25. 

2 VERSATILITY. 

(e) Memory. Isa. 65:17; Jer. 3:16; 2 Chron. 7:11; 
Acts 7: 23; 1 Cor. 2: 9; Luke 7: 66; 21: 14. 

(f) Thinking. Gen. 8:21; 17:17; 24:45; Eccl. 1:16; 
Matt. 24:48; Heb. 4: 12. 

(g) Birth of Words. Job 8: 10; Ps. 15: 2; Matt. 12: 34; 
Ex. 28: 3. 

3 VIRTUES AND VICES. 

(d) All Degrees of Fear. Prov. 12: 25; EecL 2: 20; 
Deut. 28: 28; Ps. 143: 4; Jer. 32: 40. 

(e) All Degrees of Anguish. Josh. 5: 1; Jer. 4: 19; Lev. 
26: 36; Ps. 102: 4. 

(f) All Conscious Unity. 1 Chron. 12:38; Jer. 32:39; 
Ezek. 11: 19; Acts 4: 32. 

In our studies of the heart, it will be an astound- 
ing thing for us to be told, and then to realize, that 
love springs from our voluntary choice. 

(c) Love. (1 Tim. 1:5; Prov. 23 : 26 ; Judg. 5:9; 
Phil. 1:7; 2 Cor. 7:3.) 

If the division is made in the Bible between Divine 
and human love, it is only to sum up, or illustrate, 
Divine love. Love is the sovereign preference of my 

120 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 121 

person for another person manifesting itself in the 
self-imposed weakness of pity and compassion. 

Take it in the highest meaning, and you will find 
that love never springs naturally, that is, it does not 
spring naturally out of the human heart. There- 
fore it is open to every one to choose whether he 
or she will have this love rooted in them by the 
gift of God's Holy Spirit. 

What we are emphasizing is the need of volun- 
tary choice; there is practically no use praying, "0 
Lord, for more love! Give me love like Thine; I do 
want to love Thee better," if one has not begun at 
the first place, and that first thing is to choose to 
receive the Spirit that will shed abroad that love. 
(Rom. 5:5; Luke 11:13.) "We must beware of one 
tendency in ourselves, and that is to try to do 
what God alone can do, Und then to blame God 
for not doing what we alone can do. For instance, .. 
we try to "save" ourselves, but God only can do 
that, and then we 4:ry to "sanctify" ourselves, but 
God only can do that, then, after He has done those 
sovereign works of grace, we have to work that grace 
out in our lives. (Phil. 2 : 12, 13.) 

We have, then, to make the voluntary choice of 
receiving the Holy Spirit, who will "shed abroad" in 
our hearts this wonderful love, and create in us the 
sovereign preference for Jesus Christ, and if I have 
this sovereign love in my heart, then my love for all 
other people will be relative to that centre. Paul, you 
remember, brings that out very clearly when he says, 
"We do not preach ourselves, we preach Jesus Christ 



122 Biblical Psychology. 

as Lord, and ourselves your servants, for Jesus' sake." 
(2 Cor. 4:5.) 

The great mainspring, then, is this love, and I, by 
voluntary choice, can have it created and shed abroad 
in me, and the Spirit sheds abroad that love which 
will go on (unless I hinder by disobedience) devel- 
oping and disciplining and manifesting the perfect love 
mentioned in First Corinthians, chapter thirteen. 

(d) Hate. (Lev. 19:17; Ps. 105: 25.) 

The exact opposite of love is hate. Hate is a 
subject we do not hear much about in connection with 
Christianity nowadays. The two passages quoted are 
chosen from an innumerable number in the Bible. 

Hatred is the supreme detestation of my person- 
ality for another, and that other person ought to be 
the devil. You will find the Word of God is clear 
all through about the wrong of hating our brother 
men, and Paul shows us why it is wrong, that bad men 
are simply the manifestation of Satan's power. Paul 
says, "You do not battle against flesh and blood." 
(Eph. 6:12.) It is not the bad men we are fighting 
against, it is not the bad people, but it is the" prin- 
cipalities" and "powers" over and behind them. 

The presentation of the love of God as having no 
hate for the wrong and the evil and the sin and the 
badness and the devil, would simply mean that His 
love is not as strong as my love, because the stronger 
and higher and more emphatic your love the more in- 
tense is its obverse, hate. God loves us and loves the 
world so much that He hates, with a perfect hatred, the 
thing that is twisting and the being that is turning 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 123 

men away from Him, away from right. The two 
antagonists, to put it in a crude, brief phrase, are 
God and the devil. 

Probably the best way to use David's " cursing' ' 
Psalms is in some such way as this, "Do not I hate 
them that hate Thee?" What is it that hates God? 
Nobody you know hates God half as much as the 
old disposition in you; that is the thing you have to 
hate. The carnal mind is enmity against God, that 
is the thing you have to hate. It is the principle that 
lusts against the Spirit of God, and is determined to 
have your body and mind to rule them away from God, 
and the Spirit of God will awaken in you an un- 
measured hatred of that power, until you not only 
get sick of it, but sick to death of it, and gladly 
make the moral choice to go to its funeral. The 
whole meaning of Komans 6:6 is just that thing 
put in Scriptural language, "We know that our old 
man is crucified with Christ." That "old man" is 
the thing the Spirit of God has taught us to hate. 
Make no excuse for it, and you will find the con- 
centration of the love of God in your heart will fix 
your soul in horror against the wrong thing. So 
next time you come across those Psalms which sen- 
sitive people think so terrible, bring them to bear 
on the right thing. 

One more thing, the Book says that God loves 
the world (John 3:16), and the Book also says that 
"if you love the world, you are an enemy of God." 
(1 John 2:15.) The difference between the loves is 
simply this; God loves the world so much that He 



124 Biblical Psychology. 

goes all lengths to remove the wrong from it, and 
God loves me so much that He goes all lengths to 
remove the wrong from me, and I have to have the 
same kind of love. The other love simply means 
I take the world as it is, and am perfectly delighted 
with it. All your talk about sin and evil and the 
devil and atonement are all so many Orientalisms, and 
people say the world is all right and we are very 
happy in it! This is the sentiment that hates God. 
The person who is the friend of that is the enemy of 
God. (Jas. 4:4.) Do I love the world sufficiently to 
spend and be spent for God to manifest His grace 
through me, till the wrong and the evil are removed? 
Thank God that all these voluntary choices in my 
heart and life will work out those tremendous pur- 
poses! Have I made the voluntary choice? Have 
I settled the account with God? Have I come to the 
end of myself? Am I really a spiritual pauper? Do I 
really realize, without any cunning, that I have no 
power in myself at all to be holy? Do I deliberately 
choose, then, to receive from Him the sovereign grace 
that will work those things in me, and when He puts 
them in, work them out with glad activity? 

2. Versatility. 

"We explained this in a previous study, as "the 
power to turn easily from one thing to another.' ' 
"When you are in difficult circumstances, remember 
the time when they were not so trying. God has 
given you the power to turn yourself by remembering, 
and if you lose that power, you punish yourself, and 
that way will lead to melancholia and a "fixed idea." 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 125 

As expressive of this great and surprising power, 
take (e) Memory, to emphasize again what we said 
before, is not in the brain, but in the heart. The 
brain is not a spiritual thing, the brain is a physical 
thing, and the brain recalls more or less clearly what 
the heart remembers. Memory exists in the heart 
because memory is a spiritual thing. When Jesus 
said to the rich man, "Son, remember' ' (Luke 16), 
He was talking to a man not in this order of things 
at all, to a man not with a physical brain. (Isa. 65 : 17 ; 
Jer. 3:16; 2 Chron. 7:11; Acts 7:23; 1 Cor. 2:9; 
Luke 1:66; 21:14.) 

These passages refer to the marvelous power of 
God to blot out of memory certain things. Forget- 
ting, with us, is a defect; forgetting, with God, is an 
attribute. God forgets our sins, "I will remember 
them no more for ever," and these passages allude 
to the power God grants of forgetting. 

Now look at Luke 1:66 and 21:14. There the 
memory is placed in the heart, and one never for- 
gets unless by the sovereign gra.ce of God. The 
problem w r ith us, in this life, is, that we do not 
recall easily. Tour recalling depends upon the state 
of your physical brain, and when people say they 
have a "bad memory," what they mean is they 
have a bad power of recalling. Paul says, "Forget- 
ting those things that are behind" (Phil. 3:13), but 
notice what kind of things he does forget; he never 
forgot what he was before, that is, Paul never for- 
got that he was a perjurer, a blasphemer and an in- 
jurious person. (1 Tim. 1: 13.) That is not what 



126 Biblical Psychology. 

he is referring to, he is referring to his spiritual at- 
tainments. "I forget what I have attained to, be- 
cause I press on to something else." Immediately 
you begin to "rest on your oars" about your spiritual 
experience, saying, "Thank God I have attained to 
this!" that moment you begin to go back. Forget- 
ting to what you attained, keep your eyes fixed 
on the Lord Jesus, and press on. 

Do not confuse those two statements. People say 
God helps us to forget our past life. Is that quite true ? 
God's grace every now and again brings you back 
to remember who you are, and brings you back to 
remember the "pit from whence you were digged," 
so that you do understand that what you are is all 
by the sovereign grace of God, not by our own work, 
otherwise you would be the most uplifted, the most 
proud and worst of all creatures. 

With regard to people with "impaired memory," 
as it is termed, some say it is best to remove them; 
it would be better, if it were legal, to put them into 
a sleep. Why? Because we estimate wrongly; we 
estimate according to the perfection of the machine, 
the condition of the character. Now God looks where 
we cannot see, God looks at the heart; He does not 
look at the brain, He does not look as man looks, He 
does not sum up the way we sum up; and here is 
the wonderful thing, that, by handing our lives over, 
by a voluntary choice, to God, and receiving His Holy 
Spirit, He can purify us down to deeper depths than 
we can ever think of going. Then -how foolish people 
are not to hand over the keeping of their lives to 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 127 

Him, for "He will keep the feet of His saints/ ' and 
keep your heart so pure that you would tremble with 
amazement if you knew how pure the atonement of 
the Lord Jesus can make the vilest human heart, if 
that heart will keep in the light with God walking 
in the light as He is in the light. (1 John 1:7.) 

We use that verse much too glibly. It is simply 
God letting the plummet right straight down to the 
very depths of a redeemed heart's experience, and 
saying, "Now that is how I see you" — made pure 
by this marvelous atonement of Jesus, the last strand 
of memory purified by God. 

Now take the next thing, (f) Thinking. Think- 
ing is placed in the heart, not in the brain. The 
real spiritual powers of a man reside in his heart, 
which is the centre of his physical life, the centre of 
his soul life, and the centre of his spiritual life. 
Thinking is in the heart, expression of thinking is 
referred to the brain and the mouth, because by 
those organs thinking becomes articulate. 

(Gen. 8:21; 17:17; 24:45; Eccl. 1:16; Matt. 24: 
48; Heb. 4:12.) 

Thinking according to the Bible, resides in the 
heart, and that is the region the Spirit of God deals 
with. Take this as a general rule, that Jesus Christ 
never answered any questions that sprang from man's 
head, because any question that springs intellectually 
merely from our brains, we have always borrowed 
from some book we have read, or from somebody else 
we have heard speak, but the questions that spring 
from our hearts, the real problems that vex us, Jesus 



128 Biblical Psychology. 

Christ answers those. You will find your problems 
and mine very difficult to state in words, and those 
are the problems Jesus Christ solves, those are the 
questions He came to deal with. He deals with this 
implicit centre. 

The heart is the first thing to live in physical 
birth, and in the spiritual birth it is the same; and 
it is a wonderful thing that God can cleanse and 
purify the thinking of my heart. That is why God 
says "out of the fulness of the heart the mouth 
speaketh." The Bible actually says that words are 
born in the heart, not in the tongue. The heart 
is (g) The Birthplace of Words. (Job 8:10; Matt. 
12:34.) Jesus Christ said about His speaking that 
He always spoke what His Father wanted. Why? 
Did His Father write His words out and tell Him to 
learn them by heart ? No, the mainspring of the heart 
of Jesus Christ was exactly the mainspring of the heart 
of God the Father, and consequently the words Jesus 
Christ spoke were the exact expression of God's 
thought, and the tongue in our Lord got to its right 
place ; He never spoke from His head, He always spoke 
from His heart. 

"If a man seem to be religious, and cannot bridle 
his tongue, his religion is vain," there is nothing in 
it. Now this tongue and this brain are under our 
control, not under God's. 

Look at the history of words in different coun- 
tries of our human race. Take our words to-day, 
take the words at the head of these studies, they 
are all technical words, there is no "heart" in them. 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 129 

Very few people speak, in an ordinary way, from 
their hearts. Take the earlier days, take the lan- 
guage of the "Authorized Version" of the Bible! The 
Bible was translated into the language the people 
spoke. To-day our speech is a great aid to inner 
hypocrisy, and it becomes a great snare, for it is 
so easy to talk piously and live iniquitously. Re- 
member, speaking from your heart does not mean 
" refinement " of speech merely; Jesus Christ's speech 
sounded anything but nice to natural ears sometimes. 
(Matt. 23.) Some words He used and some appli- 
cations He made of His truths were terrible and 
rugged. Read His description of the heart: "Out 
of the heart," says Jesus, "proceed" — and then 
comes the catalogue. The upright men and women of 
the world simply do not believe it. Jesus Christ did 
not speak as a man there, He spoke as a master of 
men, with an absolute knowledge of what the human 
heart was like. That is why He so continually pleads 
with us to hand over the keeping of our hearts to 
Him. There is a difference between "innocent" and 
"pure"; innocence is the true condition of a child, 
not of a man or woman; purity is the characteristic 
of men and women. Purity is something that has been 
tested and tried, and has triumphed; something that 
has character at the back of it, that can overcome, 
and has overcome ; innocence has always to be shielded. 
Jesus Christ, by His Spirit, makes us men and women 
fit to face the misery and wrong and discordance 
of this life, but always keeping in tune with Him 
ourselves. 



130 Biblical Psychology. 

3. Virtues and Vices. 

All degrees of fear, all degrees of anguish, and all 
conscious unity reside in the heart. (Scripture in 
the chart.) 

Watch, if you have not noticed already, how "nat- 
ural virtues" break down. God does not build up 
our natural virtues and transfigure them. You will 
find, very often, natural virtues in a good, upright 
worldling ; when born again of the Spirit of God, they 
seem to all go wrong, and confusion is the result of the 
Spirit of God coming in. Jesus Himself said, "I 
did not come to sow peace on the earth, I did not 
come to fling broadcast seeds of peace, I came to 
do the opposite, I came to send a sword,' ' something 
that would at once divide people, divide homes, divide 
a man's own personal unity with himself, and the rea- 
son is this, that our virtues naturally are not promises 
of what we are going to be, they are remnants of 
what we once were. 

There is the difference between modern ways of 
looking at men and the Bible way. Modern people 
look at man and his virtues and say, "What a won- 
derful promise of what he is going to be! Give him 
right conditions, and he will develop and be all right. ' ' 
Jesus Christ says, "He must be born again first, he 
has not the germ of the right nature in him, he is a ruin, 
and only the Spirit of God changes that." Tou can- 
not patch up your natural virtues to come anywhere 
near Jesus Christ's commands. No natural love can 
come anywhere near the love Jesus Christ wants, no 
natural patience, no natural purity, no natural for- 



Heart, Radiator of Personal Life. 131 

giveness, comes anywhere near what Jesus Christ 
commands. The hymn has it rightly: 

"And every virtue we possess, 
And every victory won, 
And every thought of holiness, 
Are His alone.' ' 

What we have to learn is that we must bring every 
bit of this bodily machine into harmony with this 
new life of God, and He will exhibit in us the virtues 
that were characteristic of the Lord Jesus ; He makes 
the supernatural virtues natural. That is the meaning 
of learning how to draw on God's life for everything. 

(d) All Degrees of Fear. (Prov. 12: 25; Eccl. 2: 
20; Deut. 28:28; Ps. 143:4; Jer. 32:40.) 

Fear resides in the heart. If you take a big breath, 
you encourage your heart to pump the blood better 
through your veins, and the physical fear will go ; that 
is the physical side, but the soul illustration is the same. 
God alters and expels all the old fear by putting a new 
Spirit and a new concern in. What is that concern? 
The fear lest I grieve Him. 

(e) All Degrees of Anguish. (Jer. 4 : 19 ; Josh. 5 : 
1; Lev. 26:36; Ps. 102:4.) 

There you get the three, the physical, the psy- 
chical, and the spirit, all centered in the heart. All 
anguish is in the heart. Now what do I suffer* from? 
"What I suffer from proves where my heart is. What 
did Jesus Christ suffer from? The anguish of His 
heart was on account of sin against His Father. What 
is the anguish of my heart? Can I fill up what re- 
mains behind of His sufferings? Am I only shocked 



132 Biblical Psychology. 

at social evils and social wrongs ? or am I as profoundly 
shocked at pride against God? Do I feel as keenly 
as Jesus Christ did the erecting of man's self-will 
against God? The centering of the true anguish is 
right in the heart of man, and when God gets your 
heart and mine right, He brings us into fellowship 
with His sufferings, knowing the power of His resur- 
rection, proving in my life the fellowship of His suf- 
ferings, filling up what remains behind. 

(f) All Conscious Unity. (1 Chron. 12:38; Jer. 
32:39; Ezek. 11:19; Acts 4:32.) 

The first and last of these references are to uni- 
fication. The heart is the place where the unification 
resides, it is where God works; when once He gets 
there, He brings spirit, soul and body into perfect 
unity. There are three other things that can do 
that besides God — the world, the flesh and the devil 
can do it. The world will give an all-conscious uni- 
fication to man's heart, the devil will do it and the 
flesh will do it. 

The man who gives way to sensuality, to worldli- 
ness, to devilishness or to covetousness, does not want 
God; he is perfectly satisfied without Him: God calls 
it idolatry. 

We have to watch our hearts to see what they are 
getting into unity with ; what is my heart bringing my 
soul and body into line with? " Other lords beside 
Thee, Lord, have had dominion over us." 



CHAPTER XII. 
HEART: THE RADICAL REGION OF LIFE, 

THE RENDEZVOUS OF PERFECT LIFE. 



1 THE INNER. 

(a) Highest Love. Ps. 73:26; Mark 12:30, 31. 

(b) Highest License. Ezek. 28:2. 

(c) Darkened. Rom. 1: 21; Eph. 4: 18. 

(d) Hardened. Isa. 6:10; Jer. 16:12; 2 Cor. 3:14. 

2 THE INMOST. 

(a) Laboratory of Life. Mark 7: 20-23. 

(b) Lusts. Mark 4: 15, 19; Rom. 1: 24. 

(c) Law of Nature. Rom. 2: 15. 

(d) Law of Grace. Isa. 51: 7; Jer. 31: 33. 

(e) Seat of Conscience. Heb. 10:22; 1 John 3: 19 21. 

(f) Seat of Belief and Disbelief. Rom. 10: 10; Heb. 
3: 12. 

3 THE INNERMOST. 

(a) Inspiration of God. 2 Cor. 8:16. 

(b) Inspiration of Satan. John 13: 2. 

(c) Indwelling of Christ. Eph. 3:17. 

(d) Indwelling of Spirit. 2 Cor. 1: 22. 

(e) Abode of Peace. Col. 3: 15. 

(f) Abode of Love. Rom. 5: 5. 

(g) Abode of Light. 2 Pet. It 19. 

(h) Abode of Communion. Eph. 5: 19. 

"Bendezvous" means an appointed place of meet- 
ing. The heart is the oppointed place of meeting, not 
only for all the life of the body physically, but for 
all the life of the soul, and of the spirit. We have 
made quite clear that the heart is the centre of the 
bodily life physically, the centre of the soul life, and 

133 



134 Biblical Psychology- 

the centre of the spirit life ; and that the Bible places 
in the heart what the modern thinkers put in the brain. 

All through these studies, we have insisted on 
what the Bible insists on, that our body is the most 
gracious gift that God has given us, and if we "hand 
over" the mainspring of our life to Him, we can 
work out what He works in, through our bodily 
lives. It is through our bodily lives that Satan works 
out, and thank God it is through our bodily lives that 
God's Spirit works out. 

God fills us with His grace, fills us with His 
Spirit, puts all that is wrong right, does not suppress 
it, does not counteract it, but really readjusts the 
whole thing. Then begins our work; we work outj 
what He works in, and we have to beware of that 
snare of blaming God for not doing what we alone 
can do. When the Bible says, "Be renewed in the 
spirit of your mind," it is the he'art that is referred 
to, renewed by the Spirit of God. The expression of 
that mind comes through the mechanism of our brain, 
and the marvelous emancipation which comes slowly 
and surely is that when the Spirit of God has altered 
the heart and filled it with a new Spirit, we have the 
power to will as God wills, and to do wbat God 
wants us to do. 

You remember Jesus Christ puts the test that "if 
any man love Me, he will keep My commandments ;" 
not some of them, but all of them. No man can keep 
Jesus Christ's commandments unless God has done a 
radical work in his heart; then, if He has, that is the 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 135 

practical, simple, common-sense test, "You can keep 
My commandments." 

1. The Inner, 2. The Inmost, and 3. The Innermost. 
Now we come right into the very centre, where we do 
not know anything but what God reveals. Let me 
remind you that God's Book counsels, "Guard your 
heart, for out of it are the issues of life." We are far 
too difficult to understand ourselves; we must hand the 
keeping of our hearts over to God. If we think we 
are simple and easy to understand, we will not ask 
God to save or to keep us, but if we have come 
to the condition of the Psalmist in Psalm 139, we 
will hand the keeping of our souls straight over to 
Him, and say, "Search me!" 

First of all, take (a) Highest Love. (See Ps. 73: 
26.) Put the emphasis where the Bible ever puts it, 
"GOD is the strength of my heart." Mark 12: 30, 31. 
The highest love of your human heart is not for 
our kind, but for God. Our Lord distinctly showed 
His disciples that, if they were going to live the 
spiritual life, they must barter the natural life for it; 
that is, they must forego the natural life. Remember 
what we mean by the natural life, the ordinary, sen- 
sible, healthy, worldly-minded life. The highest love 
is not natural to the natural heart, we naturally do 
not love God. In this life, we will find out that we are 
apt to name "God" in thinking by names we ought 
to apply to Satan. Satan uses the greatest problems in 
this life to slander God's character to us, and he 
makes us think of all the calamities and miseries and 
wrongs in this life as springing from God. 



136 Biblical Psychology. 

"We have defined love, in its highest sense, as being 
the sovereign preference of my person for another 
person. The surest sign that God has done a work 
of grace in my heart is that I love Jesus Christ best, 
not weakly, not faintly, not intellectually, but passion- 
ately, personally and devotedly, overwhelming every 
other love of my life. 

Another striking verse is Eomans 5:5: "The love 
of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit 
which is given to us." Paul does not say the capacity 
to love God is shed abroad in our hearts, but "the love 
of God." The Bible only knows one love in this con- 
nection, and that is the supreme, dominating love of 
God. And Jesus Christ taught that, if our hearts, in 
their inmost centre, have had the work of grace done 
in them, we will show the same love to our fellow-men 
that God showed us. 

The natural heart, we cannot repeat it too of- 
ten, does not want the Gospel, it needs it. We 
will take God's blessings and lovingkindnesses and 
prosperities, but when it comes down to close quarters, 
and God's Spirit informs us that we have to give up 
our rule of ourselves, and let Him rule us, then at 
once we understand what Paul means when he says 
the "carnal mind," which resides in the heart, "is 
enmity against God." Am I willing for God not to 
suppress or counteract, but to totally alter the ruling 
disposition of my heart, until the love of God is shed 
abroad in my heart? These are the wonderful works 
of the grace of God, that God can take me by His spirit, 
through the atonement of Jesus, and alter the centre 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 137, 

of my life, and put there the supreme love, the supreme, 
passionate devotion of my heart, to God Himself. 

The modern man does not like His commands; he 
will not have them, he covers them over and ignores 
the first commandment. Men put first, "Thou shall 
love thy neighbor as thyself "; the great cry to-day is 
"love for mankind." Yet the great cry of Jesus is 
"love for God first/' and the highest love, this great, 
supreme, passionate devotion of my heart and life, 
springs from the inner centre changed by God. What a 
rest there is when the love of God is shed abroad in 
my heart by the Holy Spirit, when I really realize that 
God is love, not loving, but love; something infinitely 
greater than loving, consequently He has to be very 
stern. 

There is no such thing as God overlooking sin. 
That is where people make a great mistake with regard 
to love, they say that God is love, and of course Hei 
will forgive sin; God is holy love and of course He 
cannot forgive sin. Jesus Christ did not come to 
forgive sin, He came to save us from sin. The salva- 
tion of Jesus Christ is the removal of the sinner in my 
heart and the planting in of the saint. That is the 
marvelous work of grace, and to know; whether 
the natural heart of man wants the Gospel of 
God, notice the natural enmity of the heart against 
the working of the Spirit of God. "No, I do not 
object to being forgiven, I do not mind being guid- 
ed, I do not mind being blessed, but really it is too 
much a radical surrender if I have to give up my 
right to myself, if I have to allow the Spirit of 



138 Biblical Psychology. 

of God to have absolute control of my heart," that 
is the natural resentment. But oh, the ineffable-, 
unspeakable delight when made one with God, one 
with Jesus, and one with every fellow-believer in this 
great, overhelming characteristic of love, and when 
life becomes possible on God's plan! 

(b) Highest License. In Ezekiel 28:2, there is 
the presentation of the personality of sin, not only 
the person with a wrong disposition, like we all 
have inherited, but the picture of the very being we 
know as Satan, who is the instigator behind the 
wrong disposition, inciting to license; which simply 
means, "I will not be bound by anybody's laws 
but my own!" The spirit that resents God's law 
will not have anything to say to Him. "I will 
rule my body as I choose, I will rule my social 
relationships as I like, I will rule my religious life 
as I choose, and I will not allow any creed or doctrine 
or God to rule me." That is the beginning of license. 

Watch how often the apostle Paul warns, "Do 
not use your liberty for license." What is the 
difference ? Why, liberty is the ability to perform the 
law, perfect freedom to fulfill all the demands of the 
law; license is rebellion against all law. If my heart 
does not become the centre of this awful trust, the 
centre of divine love, it will become the centre of 
diabolical license. Do people believe that? Jesus 
Christ's statements are not accepted by the majority 
of us nowadays. Immediately we look at them, the 
intenseness of them, the profundity of them and the 
fearfulness of them, make us shrink straight away. 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 139 

A very profitable, a very solemn, and a very awful 
study is the study of the connection of the phrase 
" children of the devil,'' as used by Jesus. He is 
not referring to ordinary sinners; He is referring 
to religious sinners; natural sinners are called "chil- 
dren of wrath," but whenever our Lord uses the 
phrase, "children of the devil," He is referring 
to religious disbelievers, viz.: people who have seen 
the light and refused to walk in it, will not 
have it. Remember those two alternatives. Our 
hearts, thank God! may be the very centre of 
divine love, making us one with God's thoughts and 
purposes, or they may be the centre of the devil's rule, 
making us absolutely one with the being who hates 
God, one with the "prince of this world," one with 
the natural life which barters the spiritual. 

(c) Darkened. (Rom. 1:21; Eph. 4:18.) Those 
are striking passages, quite at home in the New Tes- 
tament, but at home nowhere else. 

This is not a darkness that is "intensity of 
light," it is a refusal to allow any light at all. 
Read John 3:19, to see our Lord's use of that word 
"darkness," "This is the condemnation," this is the 
critical crisis "that the light is come into the world, 
and men loved darkness rather than the light, be- 
cause their deeds were evil." Jesus said,, on another 
occasion, "If the light in you be darkness, how great 
is that darkness." Darkness is "my own point of 
view;" when once I allow the prejudice of my head 
to shut down the witness of my heart, I make my 
heart dark. 



140 Biblical Psychology. 

When Jesus Christ preached His first public sermon 
in Nazareth, the place "He wlas brought up in" 
((See Luke 4), the people's hearts witnessed to Hira, 
wonderfully and marvelously, but then their preju- 
dices got in the way, and they closed down the 
witness of their hearts, and they broke up the ser- 
vice, and tried to kill Him. That is an instance 
of how it is possible to choke the witness of the 
heart by the prejudice of the head. That it what 
Jesus is referring to in John 3. He is talking to a 
man who is in danger of closing down the witness 
of his heart because of his Jewish prejudice. Is there 
any light some of us have been thanking God for? (as 
the 118th Psalm puts it, "Blessed be God who hath 
showed us light"), and then is there a prejudice 
coming in, a closing down the witness of the heart? 
If so, that is where the darkened heart begins; light 
does not shine because it cannot. You can only see 
along the line of your prejudices, until the Holy 
Spirit has come in; if you will let Him come in with 
His dynamite power to blow away the lines of your 
prejudice, then you can begin to "go" in God's light. 
A darkened heart is a terrible thing, because a 
darkened heart may make a man happy; a man with 
a darkened heart may be peaceful, saying, "My heart 
is not bad, I am not convicted of sin, all this talk 
about being born again and filled with the Holy Spirit 
is so much absurdity." The natural heart does not 
want the Gospel of Jesus, and will fight against it; 
it needs it, but it takes the convicting grace of God to 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 141 

bring a man or woman to know the radical work of 
grace that God does in us. 

Then (d) Hardened. (2. Cor. 3:14.) The char- 
acteristic of hardening is quite familiar in the Bible, 
but unfamiliar everywhere else. For instance, the 
Bible says that God hardened Pharaoh's heart. "When- 
ever a man gets into an exalted position, it is that in 
which he may show the marvelous grace of God, or else 
it will harden his heart away from God. You find 
it true everywhere of the prejudiced heart and the 
hardened heart, not so much the darkened heart. 
There is no witness of the heart that is being crushed 
down, it is simply hard, it is not touched; when God's 
love and God's works are abroad, it remains like ice; 
you may smash and break it by judgments, but you 
simply break ice. The only way we can alter the 
hardened heart is to melt it, and the only power that 
can melt a hardened heart is the fire of the Holy 
Ghost. The heart is such a truly central thing that 
God alone knows it, and the illustrations used in the 
Bible are given in varying changing figures, so that 
we may get a bit of understanding as to how God 
deals with us. Thank God, everyone of us may have 
the first, the highest love ! 

Now take the second column of the outline, (a) 
A laboratory is a place where anything is prepared 
for use. Remember, your heart never dies, your heart 
is as immortal as God's Spirit, for it is the centre of 
man's spirit. Memory never dies, mind never dies; our 
daily machines dies, and the manifestation of our heart 
and life in this body dies, but the heart never dies. 



112 Biblical Psychology. 

''Son, remember/ ' that was to a man out of the 
body. The things prepared for use are prepared for 
use in the heart. (Mark 7 : 20-23.) These are stagger- 
ing verses, and they spring from the lips of the Master 
of the human heart. They are not the shrewd guesses 
of a scientist, or the simple invitations of an apostle, 
they are the revelation of God Almighty, through 
Jesus Christ. Look at them, and see whether they 
do not awaken resentment in you unless you have 
received the Spirit of God. 

Those verses mean this, there is no crime ever 
committed by a human being that every human 
being is not capable of. How many people believe 
that? "Why," they say, "that is morbid nonsense; 
absurd." That judgment means that Jesus Christ 
did not know what He was talking about, and people 
are accepting willingly and eagerly and all-embrac- 
ingly, "Christian Science," that popularization of this 
other thing, as though there were no such things as 
sin and defilement, no such thing as death; they say 
they are all imagination. The consequence is, people 
are preaching the gospel of "temperament," "cheer 
up and look on the bright side of things." How can 
a man live on the bright side of things when the 
Spirit of God has shown him the possibilities of Hell 
inside him? The majority of us are shockingly igno- 
rant, simply because we will not allow the Spirit of 
God to reveal to us the enormous dangers that lie 
hidden in the centre of our lives. Dangers to you 
and to me, said Jesus, never come from outside, al- 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 143 

ways from the inside. If we will accept His verdict 
and receive the Spirit of God, He will see that those 
things never belch up because He will re-relate the 
whole heart from the inside. 

The "Rendezvous of Perfect Life." Remember 
"perfect life" is not "perfection;" perfect life is a 
perfect adjustment of every one of the powers of the 
heart to God. By perfection is meant, perfect at- 
tainments in everything. Perfect life means the 
perfect adjustment of all my relationships to God; 
nothing out of joint, but all rightly related. Now 
I can begin to live the perfect life, that is, I can be- 
gin to attain. A child is a perfect human being, so 
is a man; what is the difference? The one is not 
grown, the other is. Read Phil. 3 : 12-15, and you will 
find the two perfections put very clearly. "When you 
are sanctified, says Paul, you are perfectly adjusted 
to God, but remember, you have done nothing yet, 
you have attained to nothing in the perfect life yet, 
you are simply perfectly adjusted to God. The whole 
life is right, undeserving of censure, now then begin 
to attain in your bodily life, to prove that your heart 
is perfectly adjusted. 

(b) Lusts. (Mark 4 : 15-19 ; Rom. 12 : 4.) 
What is lust? "I must have it at once!" that is 
lust. Jesus says that that will destroy every work 
of grace He ever begins in us. "The lust of other 
things entering in chokes the Word." Now lust is used 
once in the Bible of another thing beside wrong. It 
is used of the Spirit of God, "lusting against the 
flesh;" that means that the Spirit of God, once He 



144 Biblical Psychology. 

gets in in spiritual new birth, lusts after, must have 
at once, this body for God, and He will not tolerate 
for one second "the carnal mind," consequently, 
when a person is born again of the Spirit, there is 
a disclosure of the enmity against God. No man 
knows he has that enemy on the inside till he has 
received the Spirit of God. Immediately he has, 
then the carnal mind is aroused, and the carnal 
mind sneers, and the carnal mind clamors, and 
the carnal mind says, "No, I will not yield to 
the Spirit/' and there you have the war described 
in Galatians 5. The "Spirit against the flesh, and 
the flesh against the Spirit/' both of them demand- 
ing, "I must have this body at once/' while I 
have to give the casting vote. "Which power am I 
going to give this body to? Thank God for every- 
one who has said, "Lord, I give it to Thee; I want 
to be identified with the death of Jesus Christ until 
I know that my 'old man' is identified with the 
cross!" 

But watch lust on the bad side; watch where it 
begins. "You did run well, who did hinder you?" 
Think what simple things Jesus Christ says will crush 
what He put in, "the lust of other things," "the cares 
of this world." Once let a man or woman get wor- 
ried, and the choking of the grace of God begins. If 
anyone has really had wrought into heart and head 
the complete, amazing revelation which Jesus Christ 
gives, that God is love and that I can never remember 
anything that He will forget, then worry is impossible, 
also note how much Jesus Christ talks against worry, 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 145 

and you will find the reason. The "cares of this 
world' ' produce worry, the "lust of other things" 
coming in will choke all that God put in. Is the 
thing that is claiming my attention now the one thing 
that God has saved and sanctified me for? If so, 
instantly life becomes simpler, the crowding, clamoring 
lusts have no life. 

(c) The Law of Nature, (d) the Law; of Grace, 
'(e) the Seat of Conscience and (f) the Seat of Belief 
and Disbelief. They are all in the heart. 

Conscience we call the "eye of the soul," and 
the orbit of the conscience, the orbit of that marvel- 
ous recorder, is the heart, "Having our heart sprinkled 
from an evil conscience," and God puts the law of 
grace where the law of nature worked, in the heart* 
Thank God for His sovereign grace, which can alter 
the mainspring of life! God alters the mainspring 
of the life, God alters the heart, God purifies the heart, 
God fills the heart. 

The Seat of Belief and Unbelief. (Heb. 3:12.) 
There the distinction is made perfectly clear. Your 
heart must never be an agnostic; your head, if you 
like, may be. The reason people disbelieve God is 
not because they do not understand things with their 
heads, there are very few things we understand with 
our heads ; it is because they have turned their hearts 
in another direction. Why was Jesus Christ so 
stern against "disbelief"? Because it never springs 
from the head, but from the wrong direction of 
the heart. Every Christian is an avowed agnostic 
in the head. Have you ever thought of that? How 



146 Biblical Psychology. 

do I know God? All I know of God I have accepted 
as a revelation, I did not find Him out by my head. 
"No man by searching can find out God." Next time 
you meet some agnostic friends, say something like 
that to them, and see if it does not alter the problem 
for them. 

One has to keep one's mind open about a great 
many things. Can I have the evil heart of unbelief 
taken out of me, and a heart of belief put in? Thank 
God, the answer comes "Yes!" (Ezek. 36:26.) Can 
I have an impure, defiled heart made pure, so pure 
that it is pure in God's sight? Then comes the an- 
swer "Yes!" (1 John 1:7.) Can I be filled with 
the Holy Ghost, until every nook and cranny is ex- 
actly under the control of God? Then comes the an- 
swer "Yes!" (Matt. 3:11, 12.) 

Jesus Christ's Gospel works down in the centre 
first, not in the circumference. He works exactly 
where we work in the natural world. Nobody is 
capable of thinking about being born before they are 
born, or how they will live after they are born 
into this world, we have to be born into this world 
to live, and some of us never think about it. Jesus 
says, "Do not marvel that I say unto you, Ye must 
be born again." You must be born into this 
new world first, and if you want to know My 
doctrine, do My will spiritually, a right relation 
of the heart to God is essential first. How am 
I going to get a right heart relationship to God? 
"Why, simply by accepting God's Spirit. Who will 
put me in the right place to understand how God's 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 147 

grace works? Let any man or woman receive the 
Spirit of God and see whether the Spirit of God will 
not lead into all truth. 

Now take 3. The Innermost 

(a) The Inspiration of God may dwell in the in- 
nermost recesses of my heart. Read the passage and 
you will be surprised at the seeming slightness of it. 
(2 Cor. 8:16.) There the inspiration for benevolence 
and philanthropy springs from God, and God's Book 
has some stern revelations to make about our philan- 
thropy and benevolence. They spring from a totally 
wrong motive; the inspiration of God does not patch 
up my natural virtues, but remakes the whole 
of the being, and I find that every virtue I possess is 
His alone. God does not come in and patch up my 
good works, He turns the whole lot out, and puts 
in the Spirit that was characteristic of Jesus; it is 
His patience, His love, and His tenderness and gentle- 
ness exhibited through me. "If any man eat My 
flesh and drink My blood.' ' When God alters a man's 
heart, and plants His Spirit inside, the actions have the 
inspiration of God at the basis; if they have not, we 
may have (b) the Inspiration of Satan. (John 13:2.) 

(c) The Indwelling of Christ (Eph. 3:17)— an 
unspeakable wonder! Those two figures are very 
remarkable, made one in the mystical body of Christ, 
that Christ may indwell us. There are three pictures 
of Jesus given in the New Testament; first, the his- 
toric; second, God incarnate; and third, the mystical 
body of Christ, that is being made up of sanctified 



148 Biblical Psychology. 

believers now. By the sovereign work of God and 
the indwelling Christ in me, I can show through my 
body, through my eyes, my life, my bodily relation- 
ships, the very same characteristics that were strong 
in the Lord Jesus, so that men may know that I have 
been with Jesus as He said, "men seeing your good 
works may glorify your Father in Heaven." 

The thought is unspeakably full of glory, that God 
the Holy Ghost, the marvelous grace of God, can 
come into my heart and fill it so full wi,th the life 
of God that it will manifest itself all through this 
body that used to manifest the other thing. Other 
things being equal, that means that I am willing to 
let it out, that I am willing to keep on that line, 
to keep in the light, I am willing to walk in the light, 
I am determined to keep in the light and obey the 
Spirit. Then those characteristics of the indwelling 
Christ will manifest themselves. 

(d) The Indwelling of the Spirit. This is a 
much more explaining thing. The man Christ Je- 
sus, His Spirit, His soul, and His body, were kept 
in perfect oneness with God the Father; when 
the Spirit of God dwells in me the very same 
thing happens. My spirit and soul and body are 
made at one with God, that is the meaning of 
atonement. Study Jesus Christ's life, always right to 
God ; His outlook on men was always right, His prayer 
life was always right to God, His outlook down on 
sin and the devil and Hell was always right ; He never 
ignored any of these facts (like a great many modern 
people are doing), and that Spirit will produce the 



Heart, Rendezvous of Life. 149 

same characteristics in me, energizing my spirit by 
the Holy Spirit, lifting me through the marvelous atone- 
ment of Jesus Christ, by the sovereign works of grace, 
into the same at-one-ness with God that Jesus Christ 
had. "As He is, so are we in this world.' ' "That 
they may be one as we are one," not by absorption, 
but by identification ; not the Buddhist teaching, that 
is so prevalent nowadays, that we have to be absorbed 
into one great, big, infinite Being, that is not the 
teaching here, but one in identity. A disposition just 
like Jesus Christ's, where we are only interested in 
the things that would have interested the Lord, and 
we cannot be appealed to by the line on which the 
world is appealed to. 

(e) The Abode of Peace, (f ) of Love, (g) of Light, 
and (h) of Communion. 

This is the peace of God, not peace with God; 
Thank God, there is a peace with God, but this 
is a different thing. "My peace I leave with 
you," says Jesus. The peace that characterized Je- 
sus characterizes His saints. The love of God is shed 
abroad in our hearts, not the capacity to love God, 
but the very inward character of the love of 
God. That is what Paul means when he says 
those words we are so familiar with, "I have been 
crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, 
but Christ liveth in me; and the life I now live in 
the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God." Not 
faith in Jesus, but the faith that was in Jesus is in 
me; the same faith, peace, love and light that char- 
acterized Him, characterize me; I am identified with 



150 Biblical Psychology- 

Him to such a degree that you cannot detect a differ- 
ent spring, because there is not one! "It is no longer 
my old disposition that rules me," says Paul. 

Watch where language fails, and that is where 
people get confused in the New Testament. If you 
have not the Spirit of God within you, you find the 
apostle Paul is trying and straining language beyond 
its limit, to express exactly what the Spirit of God 
does; the Spirit of God alters the ruling disposition, 
and the same man shows himself entirely different. 
Peace, light and love ; that wonderful picture of light, 
''No shadow and no variableness caused by turning," 
— nothing to hide, those are the characteristics of God, 
and Peter and Paul say, "Walk as children of light." 
John says, "Walk in the light." 1 John 1 : 7 is a won- 
derful description of the kind of fellowship we will 
have. Natural affinity does not count here at all, 
watch in your life how God has altered your af- 
finities since you were filled with the Spirit; you 
have an affinity of fellowship with people you have 
no natural affinity for at all ; you have fellowship with 
anybody else who is in the light, no matter who they 
are, what nation they belong to, or anything else, a 
most extraordinary alteration. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

OURSELVES: I; ME; MINE, 

OURSELVES AS "KNOWER." I THE "EGO." 

1 SOME DISTINCTIONS OF IMPORTANCE. 

(a) Individuality. 

(b) Personality. 

(c) Egoism and Egotism. 

2 SOME DETERMINATIONS OF INTEREST. John 3:2. 

(a) The "Ego M is Inscrutable. Isa. 26:9; Ps. 19:12. 

(b) The "Ego" is Introspective. Ps. 139; Prov. 20:27. 

(c) The "Ego" is Individual. Ezek. 18:1-4. 

3 SOME DELUSIONS OF IMPORTANCE. 2 Thess. 2: 7-12. 

(a) The "Ego" in Delusions of Insanity. 

(b) The "Ego" in Delusions of Alternating Personalities. 

(c) The "Ego" in Delusions of Mediums and Possessions. 

4 SOME DISCRIMINATIONS OF INTEREST. Heb. 2: 

10, 11. 

(a) Independence of the Persons. John 1: 11-13. 

(b) Identification with the Purpose. Gal. 2: 20. 

(c) Incorporation of the Power. 1 Cor. 12: 12, 14. 
This last section deals with the Readjustment of Ego 

in Redemption. 

1. Some Distinctions of Importance. 

We divide this subject of Ourselves into two — one, 
the part that knows, the Ego ; and the other the known, 
the Me. 

First of all, we will take these distinctions gen- 
erally — Individuality and Personality, and Egoism and 
Egotism, and find how the Bible gives wonderful in- 
sight into these distinctions. 

151 



152 Ourselves : I ; Me ; Mine. 

(a) Individuality is a much slighter term than (b) 
Personality. "We speak of an individual animal, an 
individual man, and an individual thing. An indi- 
vidual man simply happens to be one by himself, he 
takes up so much space, requires so many cubic feet 
of air, etc. Personality is infinitely more. Possibly 
the best illustration we can get is a lamp. A lamp 
not lighted will illustrate the individual ; a lamp lighted 
will illustrate the personality. The personality in its 
influence goes far beyond the individual lamp ; it takes 
up no more room than the individual lamp, but the 
light permeates far and wide. "Ye are the light of 
the world/ ' said our Lord. "We do not take up very 
much room individually, but our influence goes far 
beyond our calculation. So when we use the term 
personality, we are using the very biggest mental 
conception we can have, and that is why we call 
God a Person, because "person'' is the word that has 
the largest import we know. We do not call God an 
individual; we call Him a Person. He may be a 
great deal more, but at least He must be that. It is 
necessary to remember this when the personality of 
God is denied, and God is taken to be a tendency. 
If He is, He is much less than I am. Our personality 
is always too big for us. When we come to examine 
the next sections and trace the Bible teaching, we 
will find that the Bible says we are much too big 
will find that the Bible says we are much too complex 
to understand ourselves. Another illustration for Per- 
sonality, more often used, is as follows : an island at sea 
may seem very easily explored, yet how amazed we 



"Knower." I the "Ego." 153 

become when we realize that it is the top of a great 
mountain, whose greater part is hidden under the 
waves of the sea, and goes sheer down to deeper 
depths than we can fathom. That little island repre- 
sents our conscious personality, the part we are con- 
scious of is a very tiny part; the great underneath 
part we know nothing about, and consequently there 
are upheavals from beneath that we cannot estimate. 
We cannot grasp ourselves at all. We begin by 
thinking we can, but we have to come to the Bible 
standpoint that no one knows himself but God. 
"There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but 
the ends thereof are the ways of death." Individu- 
ality then is a smaller term than personality. Person- 
ality means that peculiar, incalculable being that is 
meant when you speak of "you" as distinct from every- 
body else. People say, "Oh, I cannot understand 
myself," of course you cannot. "Nobody else under- 
stands me," of course they don't. There is only one 
Being who understands us, and that is our Creator. 

It is necessary to have the proper distinctions in 
our minds regarding (c) Egoism and Egotism. "Ego- 
tism" is a conceited insistence on my own particular 
ways and manners and customs. It is an easily dis- 
cernible characteristic, and fortunately is condemned 
straightway by all right-thinking people. We are all 
inclined to overlook it in very young and very ig- 
norant people, but even in them it is of the detestable, 
vicious order. But of Egoism we can only say good 
things. It is that system of thinking that makes the 
human personality the centre. Thinking that starts 



154 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

from all kinds of abstractions is contrary to the 
Bible way of thinking. The Bible way gets us right 
straight down to man as the centre. What puts man 
right and keeps man right is the revelation in God's 
Book. For instance, our Lord and the apostle Paul 
continually centre around "I," but there is no ego- 
tism about it. It is egoism, everything is related to 
man, to his salvation, to his sanctification, to his 
keeping, etc. Every system of thinking which has 
man for its centre and as its aim and purpose is rightly 
called Egoism. 

2. Some Determinations of Interest 

The personality of man is the most internal nature 
of man, it is distinct from spirit, soul and body and yet 
embraces all. It is the innermost centre of man's spirit, 
soul and body, and there are three things about this Ego. 
It is (a) Inscrutable, we cannot understand it, we can- 
not search it out. The Bible says that a man is in- 
capable of satisfactorily searching himself out. Isaiah 
26:9 says, ''"With my soul have I desired Thee in the 
night, yea, with my spirit within me will I seek 
Thee early.' ' The distinction there is made clearly 
between the inmost personality called "I" and spirit, 
soul and body, and the distinction is kept up all 
through God's Book. I can search, my spirit up to 
a certain point; I can search my soul and my body, 
but only up to a certain point. Man begins to find, 
immediately he comes to examine himself, that he is 
inscrutable. He cannot examine himself thoroughly. 
He may get certain arbitrary distinctions and call 



"Knower." I the "Ego." 155 

himself body, soul and spirit, and instantly he finds 
it is not satisfactory. Those of you who are interested 
in this kind of reading, will constantly find the word 
"subliminal" occurring, i. e., below the threshold, some- 
thing that is below the threshold of my consciousness, 
and every now and again you w r ill get something 
emerging from below the threshold of your conscious- 
ness that upsets your thought about yourself. Our 
Lord dealing with His disciples brought them into 
places where they became conscious of doing things 
they never knew. In Matthew 16 we read that Christ 
said to Peter, "Get thee behind Me, Satan." Peter 
had not the slightest notion that God Almighty lifted 
him up as a trumpet and blew a blast through him, 
which Jesus Christ recognized as the voice of His 
Father; and a little while afterward^ Satan took him 
up and blew a blast through him, which Jesus recog- 
nized as the voice of Satan. If you had told Peter 
that he was capable of denying his Lord with "oaths 
and curses," he would have been unable to understand 
how you could think it. 

There are possibilities below the threshold in my 
life and yours which no one knows but God, and Je- 
sus Christ brought His disciples through crises to re- 
veal to them that they were much too big for themselves. 
There were forces of evil and good within them which 
played havoc with every resolution and every prayer 
they made. "Who can understand his errors? Cleanse 
Thou me from secret faults." (Psa. 19:12.) This is 
simply a type verse of a revelation which runs all 
through. God's Book. We cannot understand our- 



156 Ourselves: Ij Me; Mine. 

selves, we do not know the beginnings of our dreams 
or our motives, we do not know our secret errors, 
they lie below the region we can get at. 

Then not only am I inscrutable, but I am so built 
that I am obliged to examine myself, that is the mean- 
ing of introspective, (b) Introspection means the act 
of directly observing the processes of my mind. That 
is the line upon which people go insane. Cut a tree 
in half and you can tell by the number of rings how 
old it is, and people try to cut themselves in half 
psychically, that is, they try to cut their conscious- 
ness in half and tell you how it is made; and we are 
so built that we attempt to $0 this. Immediately a 
jnan gets to feel that he is incalculable, he be- 
gins to want to understand himself, begins to in- 
trospect. The great chapter on wise introspection in 
the Bible is the 139th Psalm. That Psalm is 
Intercessory Introspection. Those words are a con- 
tradiction in terms, but they exactly convey the 
jneaning of the Psalm. This tendency in me which 
makes me want to examine myself, and know the 
springs of my thoughts and motives, in this Psalm takes 
the form of prayer, "0 Lord, explore me." The 
Psalmist gives a description of the great Creator who 
knows the beginnings of the morning and the endings 
of the evening, who knows the fathomless deep and 
the tremendous mountains, but he does not stop 
with vague abstractions ; these things are all very well, 
but they are useless for his purpose. He asks that 
great Creator to come and search him. " There are 
beginnings of mornings in me and endings of even- 



"Knower." I the "Ego." 157 

ings in me that I cannot understand; there are great 
mountain peaks I cannot scale, such knowledge is too 
wonderful for me, I cannot attain unto it, ex- 
plore me, search me out." Or, again it means, 
" Search out the beginnings of my dreams, get down 
below where I can go, winnow out my way until you 
have got to understand the beginnings of all my mo- 
tives and dreams, and let me know that you know 
me ; and the only way I will know that you know me 
is that you will save from the way of grief, you will 
save me from the way of self-realization, you will save 
me from the way of sorrow and twistedness, and you 
will lead me in the way everlasting.' ' The old Greek 
philosophers used to tell us to know ourselves, and 
the whole meaning of Socrates' teaching is exactly 
the same as in this Psalm, only from another stand- 
point. Socrates' wisdom consisted in finding out 
that he knew nothing by himself, and that is 
why he was called by the Oracle the "wisest 
man on earth." About myself I have to be an avowed 
agnostic. "We begin by thinking that we know all 
about ourselves, but a quarter of an hour of the 
"plague of our own heart" will upset all our think- 
ing and we will understand the meaning of the 139th 
Psalm. "0 Lord, search me!" Mark you, God does 
not search me unless He lets me know it. "The spirit 
of man is the candle of the Lord, searching all the 
inward parts of the belly." (Prov. 20:27.) The 
word there translated by the old Saxon word "belly" 
means "the innermost part." He makes the man 
know that He is searching him, and when we come 



158 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

to our Lord and His attitude to the human soul, that 
line of thought explains Him immediately. "If I had 
not come, they had not had sin." "If I had not 
eome with My light, and if the Holy Ghost had not 
come with His light, men had not known anything 
about sin." It takes an apostle Paul, to use the 
phrase "sold under sin," to know what it meant. 
He had been searched clean through by the penetrating 
Spirit of God. We are inscrutable, but we are so 
built that we must introspect. Introspection without 
God leads to insanity. We do not know the springs 
of our thinking, we do not know; what we are in- 
fluenced by, we do not know all the scenery psychi- 
cally that Jesus Christ looked at. For instance, our 
Lord continually saw things and beings we do not 
see. He talked about "Satan" and "demons" and 
"angels." Now we don't see Satan, or demons, or 
angels, but Jesus Christ unquestionably did, and He 
sees their influence on us. The man who criticizes Jesus 
Christ's explanation about demon possession, does not 
see what he is doing. The people who have no 
tendency to introspect, are those who are described in 
the New Testament as "dead in trespasses and sins," 
quite happy, quite contented, quite moral, all they 
want is easily within their grasp, everything is all 
right with them; but they are dead to all the world 
Jesus Christ belongs to, and it takes His voice and 
His Spirit to awaken the dead. 

By (c) the term " Individual," we mean, first, 
what we stated at the beginning in distinguishing be- 
tween individuality and personality; and second, that 



i i 



Knower." I the "Ego." 159 



every man is judged before God as an individual 
being, that what he has done he alone is respon- 
sible for. Ezekiel 18:1-4: "The word of the Lord 
came unto me again, saying, What mean ye, that ye 
use this proverb, concerning the land of Israel, say- 
ing, That the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the 
children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the 
Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to 
use this proverb in Israel. Behold, all souls are 
Mine, as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the 
son is Mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die." This 
line of revelation which runs all through God's Book 
shows the absurdity of a certain amount of cheap 
criticism, a fictitious conception which was that we are 
punished for Adam's sin. The Bible does not say so. 
The Bible says that men are punished for their own 
sins, that is, culpably punished. The Bible says that 
"sin entered into the world by one man," but sin is 
not an act on iny part at all. Sin is a disposition, 
and I am in no way responsible for having the dis- 
position of sin. What I am responsible for, is not al- 
lowing God to deliver me from it, when once I see 
that that is what Jesus Christ came to do. What I 
am punished for is the wrong things I do, and I will 
be whipped for them no matter how I plead. I will 
be inexorably punished for, and suffer from every 
wrong that I do. The inexorable law of God is laid down 
in the Old and New Testaments that the wrong I do, 
I will smart for, and be held responsible for, and 
punished for, no matter who I am. The Atonement 
has made provision for what I am not responsible for, 



160 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

viz. : the disposition of sin. John 3 : 19 sums it up : 
"This is the condemnation (or the crisis, the critical 
moment) that light is come into the world, and men 
love darkness rather than light because their deeds 
are evil." What is light? Jesus says, "I am the 
light of the world," and He said to His disciples, 
"If the light in you be darkness, how great is that 
darkness." My darkness is "my own point of view." 

You will find in the matter of regeneration 
that God works below the threshold of my con- 
sciousness; all I am conscious of is a sudden 
burst up into my conscious life, but as to when 
God begins to work no one can tell. That is 
the meaning of our intercessory prayer. A mother, 
or a husband, or a wife, or a Christian worker pray- 
ing for another soul has a clear indication that God 
has answered their prayer; but outside the people are 
just the same, there is no difference in their conduct, 
but the prayer is answered. The work is unconscious 
yet, but at any second it may burst forth into con- 
scious life. You cannot calculate where God is go- 
ing to begin any more than you can say when 
it is going to become conscious; and that is why we 
have to pray in intercession in the Holy Spirit. The 
path of peace for you and for me is to hand our case 
over to God, ask Him to search us — not what I think 
I am, not what other people think I am, not what I 
persuaded myself I am or would like to be, but " search 
me out and explore me as I really am in Thy sight." 

3. Some Delusions of Importance. (2 Thess. 2: 
7-12.) 



"Knower." I the "Ego." 161 

There are supernatural powers and agencies we are 
unconscious of which can play with us like toys when- 
ever they choose, unless we are garrisoned by God. 
The New Testament continually impresses that on us. 
"We do not battle against flesh and blood, but against 
principalities and powers and the rulers of this world's 
darkness, and spiritual wickedness in high places" — 
all outside the realm of our consciousness. When we 
pray, if we only* look for results in the "earthlies," 
we are ill-taught. A praying saint performs far more 
havoc among the unseen forces of darkness than we 
have the slightest notion of. "The effectual fervent 
prayer of a righteous man availeth much in its work- 
ing." We have not the remotest conception, nor the 
right to try and examine and understand what is 
done by our praying, all we can. know is that Jesus 
Christ laid all stress on prayer. "Greater works 
shall ye do, because I go to my Father . . . that what- 
soever ye ask the Father in My name that will I 
do." It is only when these terrors and speculations 
are awakened in us that we begin to see what the 
atonement of Jesus Christ means. It means safe- 
guarding in the unseen, safeguarding from dangers 
we know nothing about. "Kept by the power of God ! ' ' 
The conscious ring of our life is a mere phase, God 
did not only die and rise again in Jesus Christ to 
save that, it is the whole personality that is included. 

Those verses in the Second Epistle to the Thessa. 
lonians 2 : 7-12 represent the borderland realm of things 
difficult to trace. The theme is not an isolated one, 



162 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

it runs all through the Bible and indicates the border- 
land that we cannot step over. 

First, (a) Delusions of Insanity. YvTiat is insanity? 
One of the greatest mistakes to-day is the statement 
that the cases of demon possession in the Bible were 
insanity. The distinction between them is made per- 
fectly clear in the New Testament; the symptoms are 
not even the same. Insanity simply means that a 
man is differently related to affairs than the majority 
of other men, and is sometimes dangerous. Paul was 
charged with madness (Acts 26:24, 25), and that is 
the charge they brought against Jesus Christ also — 
"He is mad." Have you ever noticed the wisdom of 
the charge? Jesus Christ and Paul are unquestionably 
"mad" according to the standard of wisdom of this 
world. That means they are related to affairs differ- 
ently from the majority of other men, and what the 
majority of other men must do for self-preservation is 
to shut them up in lunatic asylums. (Our Lord was 
crucified, and Paul was beheaded.) "When you get 
imbued with Jesus Christ's spirit and relation to 
life, you will find that you are just as "mad" accord- 
ing to the standard of this world. 

Another thing we say about insane people which 
is mainly wrong is that an insane person is one who 
has lost his reason, that is technically untrue. An in- 
sane person is one who has lost everything but his 
reason. He has lost the relation of the body to the 
reason, and the relation of the outside world to the rea- 
son, according to the common, most universal standard. 
He can find a reason for everything. If you know any- 



i( 



Knower." I the "Ego." 163 



thing about the diagnosis of insanity, you will find that 
this is true. If you want to know some of the cleverest 
dialectics that have ever been printed, read the expo- 
sitions of the Sermon on the Mount to-day. They 
want to make out that Jesus is not mad according to 
the standards of this world, but He is absolutely mad, 
and there is no apology* for it. The modern attitude 
to things has either got to alter or pronounce Jesus 
Christ mad. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto 
you." Volumes have been written to prove that the 
Lord did not mean anything like that, but He did, He 
taught it and proved it. Modern sense says, "It is non- 
sense, I must seek my living first, and then devote 
myself to the kingdom of God." Read the apos- 
tle Paul's reasonings in the First Epistle to the Cor- 
inthians, he says there that in the view of God 
the other crowd is mad, and a man only gets sane in 
God's sight when he is readjusted to God through the 
atonement of Jesus Christ. 

Then take (b) the Delusion of Alternating Person- 
alities, that is one body being the arena of more 
than one personality. This is not demon possession 
entirely, although the case I am going to take is so. 
This is not a case of insanity. You wonder first of all 
who is speaking. A man came to Jesus Christ and 
bowed down; he knew perfectly well, that Jesus 
could deliver him. But as soon as he got there, the 
other personality cried out against Jesus Christ and 
pled that He would deal mercifully with him. 

There are cases of alternating personalities to-day. 



164 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

The annals regarding them are amazing, you will get 
them from the records of doctors of lunacy, of peo- 
ple suddenly disappearing. Case after case has 
occurred of people disappearing from one part of 
the country and living in another a totally different 
life. Alternating personalities cannot be dealt with 
by science; but Jesus Christ can deal with them. 
Then last (c) Delusions of Mediums and Possess- 
ions. Paul was grieved because this girl was a medium. 
Spiritualistic mediumship is the greatest psychical 
crime in the world. By psychical we mean the 
greatest crime against our soul. Drunkenness and 
debauchery are child's play compared to mediumship. 
It is possible, according to the Bible revelation, for 
a man or woman to make himself or herself a medium 
through whom unseen spirits can talk to seen men 
and women. (Beware of using that phrase " yield, give 
up your will." Be perfectly certain to "WHOM you are 
yielding. No man or woman has any right to yield 
themselves to any impression, any influence, or any im- 
pulse saving Jesus Christ. Immediately you do, you are 
susceptible to all kinds of supernatural powers and 
influences. There is only one being I have to yield 
to, and that is the Lord Jesus Christ, and let me be 
sure that it is the Lord Jesus Christ. Impressionable 
people are the most dangerous people of all in re- 
ligious meetings "When you get that type of nature 
to deal with, pray as you never prayed, watch as you 
never watched, and travail in communion as you 
never travailed in communion, because the soul that 
is inclined to be the medium between any supernatural 



\ 



"Knowcr." I the "Ego." 165 

forces and himself will nearly always be caught up 
by the supernatural forces belonging to Satan in- 
stead of by God. The Bible says, * * If it be possible, even 
the very elect will be deceived' ' regarding the false 
revelation of Jesus Christ. So beware to whom you 
yield. When once a nature gets hold of the sovereign 
power of God and recognizes to WHOM he is yielded, 
then the whole power of the nature is safeguarded for- 
ever. Beware of impressions and impulses unless they 
wed themselves to the standard given by Jesus Christ. 
Insanity is a fact, demon possession is a fact, and 
niediumship is a fact.) 

"All power is given unto Me." "I will give you 
power over all the power of the enemy." "For this 
cause was Jesus Christ manifested that He might 
destroy the works of the devil." 



CHAPTER XIV. 
OURSELVES: I; ME; MINE. 

OURSELVES AS "KNOWN." "ME. 



>> 



1 THE SENSUOUS "ME." Eccl. 12: 13. 

(a) My Body. Bom. 12: 1. 

(b) My Bounty. Heb. 13: 15. 

(c) My Blessings. Eom. 12: 13. 

2 THE SOCIAL "ME." Eccl. 7: 29. 

(a) My Success. Matt. 5: 13-16. 

(b) My Sociability. John 5:40-44. 

(c) My Satisfaction. Matt. 10: 17-22. 

3 THE SPIETTUAL "ME." Eph. 2: 6. 

(a) My Mind. Eom. 12: 2. 

(b) My Morals. Matt. 5:20. 

(c) My Mysticism. Col. 2:20, 23. 

1. The Sensuous "Me." (Eccl. 12:13J 

"We mean by "Sensuous" our bodily, material con- 
sciousness. My "Body" represents one aspect of the 
"Me." Under the heading of my "Bounty," we con- 
sider our "flesh and blood relations"; and under my 
"Blessings" we consider our home, property, and 
wealth. 

2. The Social "Me." (Eccl. 7:29.) 

Under the Social' "Me" we consider all that my 
" set " means ; if you insult my " set " you insult " Me " ; 
and it is important to impress on ourselves that God 
recognizes that this is the way He has made us. Our 
Lord insists on the "social" aspect of our lives. He 

166 



Ourselves as ' ' Known. " ' ' Me. " 167 

shows very distinctly that we cannot further ourselves 
alone. 

3. The Spiritual "Me." (Eph. 2:6.) 

This last aspect of our subject is the Spiritual 
"Me." That means my religious convictions, my mind, 
my morals. 

Now to go back over (a) our first statement. 
If my body is hurt, I look upon it as a per- 
sonal hurt; if my home or my people are in- 
sulted, it is a personal insult; if my "set" and my 
society are hurt, I consider it a personal hurt ; and if 
my religious convictions are hurt or upset or 
scandalized, I consider myself as being hurt and scand- 
alized. This, then, is, in the main, the general idea 
of what we are dealing with. 

The normal "me," from the Scriptural stand- 
point, is not the average man. "Normal" means reg- 
ular, erect, perpendicular, everything exactly regular 
and related. "Abnormal" means irregular and away 
from the perpendicular; and "supernormal" means 
that which goes beyond regular experience, not con- 
tradicting it, but transcending it. Our Lord repre- 
sents the "Supernormal." We, by partaking of the 
salvation of our Lord Jesus Christ by His redemption, 
partake of the "normal," regular, upright; and apart 
from the atonement of our Lord we are "abnormal." 

We mean by the term "me" the sum total of all 
a man calls his. That means that there is no real, 
practical distinction between "me" and "mine." My 
personality identifies "mine" with myself so much 



168 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

that it is not necessary to make a distinction between 
"me" and "mine." 
1. The Sensuous Me. 

"Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: 
Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the 
whole duty of man." (Eccl. 12:13.) That verse is 
the conclusion, from the human-wisdom viewpoint, as 
to what the whole end of our life is, viz.: "to fear 
God and keep His commandments." 

"Sensuous" means that which is affected through 
my senses, or that which I get at through my senses. 
The first thing I get at by my senses is my body. The 
Bible has a great deal to tell us about our bodies. 

One of the main distinctions to make to-day 
about our body is that the Bible shows that our 
body is the medium through which we develop our 
spiritual life. The idea in the Middle Ages was that 
the body was a clog, a hindrance, an annoyance, a 
thing that kept us back, that always upset our higher 
calling; it was a thing that had sin in the very cor- 
puscles of its blood, in the cells of its make-up. This 
view the Bible disapproves of entirely. The Bible tells 
us that our bodies are "the temples of the Holy Ghost," 
not things to be despised. So the body, in the Bible 
teaching, is placed very high indeed. 

"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies 
of God, that ye present your bodies." (Rom. 12:1.) 
The Apostle does not say there, "Present your 'air 
to God." The hymns of "Higher Life" do, and con- 
sequently they are unsatisfactory, for you never can 
know when you have given your "all." Take it in 



Ourselves as ' ' Known. ? ' " Me. ' ' 169 

the light of the last chapter; if our personality is too 
big for us to understand, how are we going to know 
when we have presented our "all"? The Bible never 
says anything so vague as present your "all," but 
present your "body." There is nothing ambiguous or 
indefinite about that statement, but something definite 
and clear. The body means only one thing to us all, 
viz. : this flesh and blood body. 

Let us ask ourselves this practical question: Who 
is the ruling person that is manifested through my 
body, through my hands, through my tongue, through 
my eyes, through my thinking and loving? Is it a 
self -realizing person, or is it a Christ-realizing person? 
Our body is to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, and 
the medium for manifesting that marvelous Christ- 
disposition in us all through ; and instead of our bodies 
being a hindrance to our development, they are ex- 
actly the opposite. It is only through our bodies that 
we are developed ; our bodies are the way we express 
our characters. You cannot express a character with- 
out a body. "When we talk of a character, we think 
of a flesh and blood thing; when we think of a disposi- 
tion, w;e think of something that is not flesh and 
blood. God, by Christ's atonement, gives us the right 
disposition; that disposition is inside our bodies, and 
we have to manifest it in "character" through our 
bodies, and by means of our bodies. The whole 
use of bodily control is to make the body the 
obedient medium for expressing the right dispo- 
sition. So the Bible, instead of ignoring the fact 
that we have a body, exalts the fa,ct. We are told 



170 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 



J9 



to remember that it is the " temple of the Holy Ghost, 
and Paul says, "If you defile that temple, God will 
destroy you." Instead of the Bible belittling laws 
of health, and bodily uprightness, and bodily clean- 
liness, the Bible insists on these far more by impli- 
cation than any modern science does by explicit state- 
ment. Go back again to our first subject, viz.: The 
Making of Man (chapter II. ), and you remember that 
the chief fact of man is not that he was in the image 
of God spiritually, but that he was made of the c ' earth 
earthy.' ' It is not his humiliation, it is his glory, 
and through that mortal body is to be manifested this 
wonderful life and disposition — "Christ in us the hope 
of glory." 

Then (b) My Bounty. "By Him therefore let us 
offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, 
the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name." 
(Heb. 12:15.) That verse comes in a chapter which 
is intensely practical in dealing with our relationship 
to strangers, and our relationships in some of the most 
intimate and practical ways of life. The next re- 
lationship to my body is my blood relations, my 
father and mother, my sister and brother, my wife, 
etc. Have you ever noticed that those are the phrases 
and those are the relationships Jesus Christ refers to 
most often? Over and over again in our Lord's talk 
about discipleship, that is the sphere He deals with. 
He puts the relationships in that sphere as crucial. 
If you will read Luke 14 : 26-35, you will find that 
our Lord places our love for Him away beyond our 
love for father and mother; in fact, He uses a tre- 



Ourselves as - ' Known. ' ' " Me. ' ' 171 

mendous word; He says, "Unless you hate your father 
and mother you cannot be My disciples." This word 
"hate" appears to have been a stumbling-block to a 
great number of people. It is quite conceivable that 
many persons may have such a slight regard for their 
fathers and mothers that it is nothing to separate 
from them, but the word "hate" shows by contrast 
what love we ought to have for our parents, an in- 
tense love; yet your love for Me, says Jesus, is to be 
so intense that any other relationship is "hatred" in 
comparison when in conflict with My claims. 

Jesus preached His first sermon where He was 
known, in Nazareth (Luke 4), where He was brought 
up, and He told His disciples that they were to begin 
at "Jerusalem." What was the reason? Did Jesus 
Christ have such great success at Nazareth where He 
was brought up, where they knew Him? He had ex- 
actly the opposite. They "broke up" His service and 
tried to kill Him. Our Lord insists that we begin at 
Jerusalem, and our Jerusalem is unquestionably among 
the bounties of our own particular flesh and blood 
relations; for our own character's sake. It is infinitely 
easier for the great majority of us to offer the "sac- 
rifices of praise" and thanksgiving to strangers than 
amongst, or to, our own flesh and blood. It is a sac- 
rifice there. We would rather testify to anyone than 
to our own flesh and blood, there is where the real 
sacrifice of praise comes in, and that is where young 
converts want to skip. The reason seems to be 
"Because you will be confirmed in your character 
and relationship to Me," In the fourth chapter of 



172 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

Luke Jesus says distinctly what maddens His own 
people. He says in effect, "It is God's way to send 
His message through strangers before that message 
is accepted." They would not accept it from Him. 
"Why? Because they knew Him, land immediately 
you look at that statement you find how it revolution- 
izes a great many of our conceptions. "We would 
naturally say that if Jesus testified amongst His own 
people, how gladly they would have received Him: 
the only place they did not receive Him, the place 
that detested Him, and the place that He could not do 
many mighty works in, was the place where He was 
brought up. The place He told His disciples to begin 
their work in was this Sensuous Me, viz. : my own flesh 
and blood, my own Jerusalem begins there, and then 
you will get consolidated and know where your true 
basis lies. We do not very often put these two words 
together — "sacrifice" and "praise." Sacrifice means 
giving the best I have, but it also embraces an 
element of cost. That is where the sacrifice of praise 
comes in. My own flesh and blood relationships have 
to be the scene of the sacrifice of praise on my part, 
whether they accept it or not. 

(c) My Blessings. I mean by "Blessings," our 
home and our property. "Distributing to the neces- 
sity of saints, given to hospitality." (Rom. 12:13.) 
Have you ever noticed what a great deal the Bible has 
to say about "hospitality" and "entertaining strang- 
ers"? God recognizes the enormous importance of my 
immediate circle. Not only does this term "bless- 
ings" include my home and my property, all that 1 



Ourselves as ' ' Known. ' ' " Me. ' ' 17 3 

distinctly look at as mine, but I have to use it with 
this outlook of hospitality. Immediately you look at 
these things, you will see how personal they are. If 
your home is insulted, if any stranger begins to find 
fault with your home, you will find how intense tha 
resentment is. Our home is guarded in exactly tha 
same way as our body. It is mine, therefore it is 
part of the very make-up of my personality, and God 
won't have us keep it exclusive, we have to have it 
open and be given to hospitality. In the East they 
know a great deal more about hospitality than we do. 
"What we mean by home is what we Britishers especi- 
ally think of when we mention "home," the most 
intimate relationships ; THAT is to be the scene where 
I am to be given to hospitality. The point is "be 
given to hospitality" from God's standpoint, not be- 
cause other people deserve it, but because God com- 
mands it. That principle runs all through our Lord's 
instructions in the New Testament. Then in my body, 
in my blood relationships, and in my home I have to 
recognize everyone of them, keep them intimate, and 
keep them right, but I have to keep them with the 
first duty in each and all towards all. My body i3 
the temple of the Holy Ghost, not for me to disport 
myself in, not for me to realize myself. My "blood 
relationships" are meant unquestionably for me to rec- 
ognize, but they are to be held in subjection, if I may 
say so; my first duty is to God. And my "home" is 
to be given to hospitality. Have you ever noticed 
how God's grace comes to people given to hospitality 
if they are His children? Prosperity and growth in 



174 Ourselves : I ; Me ; Mine. 

home, business and everything else comes from follow- 
ing God's advice in every detail. 

2. Now we will take the Social Me. 

"Lo, this only have I found, that God hath mad 3 
man upright, but they have sought out many inven- 
tions." (Eccl. 7:29.) The word "inventions" is a 
very quaint one. It means devices from man's self 
love. It is a strange word. Remember, God made 
man upright, normal, perpendicular, regular; but he 
sought out many devices from his self love, many 
ingenious twistings away from the normal. Now the 
v Social Me" simply means "recognition by my set," 
and that has a wonderful influence with us all. For 
instance, the boy who is good and mild to his father 
and mother at home, may swear "like a trooper" 
when he is with the other "set." It is not because 
he is bad or evil, but because he wants to be recog- 
nized by his "set"; and you will find that that goes 
all through life, and God recognizes it, and regenerates 
that also. "We must be moulded by the set we belong 
to, whether we like it or not, and you will find that 
God very often alters our special setting. We may 
affect any amount of individuality but it remains 
true that we either "grovel" or we "strut" ac- 
cording to our realization of how we are rec- 
ognized by the "set" we belong to, and you will 
find how insistent God is on this. You cannot 
develop a holy life alone. It will be a selfish, 
wrong life, without God in it. Jesus Christ was 
charged with being a "glutton and a winebibber" be- 
cause He lived so sociably among men, and in His 



Ourselves as ' l Known. » ' ' ' Me. ' » 175 

high-priestly prayer He prays, "I do not ask you to 
take them out of the world, but to keep them from 
the evil that is in the world.' ' And the first place 
He led His disciples to after He said, "Follow Me," 
was to a marriage feast. Jesus says, "My Father and 
I will make our abode with you." That is the "set" 
God places the Christian in, fellowship with the Trin- 
ity. Therefore the greatest concern of your life and 
mine is that we live according to the recognition of 
that "set," that we do those things that please God. 

Let us now take (a) My Success. (Matt. 5 : 13-16.) _ 
[What is the standard of success as a Christian? Do 
you know; what success is? Success is to end with 
advantage. Jesus Christ distinctly recognizes that we 
have to succeed, and the kind of success is indicated. 
The advantage we have to end with in our lives, 
is "preserving salt and shining lights," not losing 
our savor, but preserving in health. If we get 
salt into a wound, it hurts, and if God's children get 
amongst those who are "raw" towards God (every 
immoral person is an open wound towards God) their 
presence hurts. For instance, the sun, which is a 
benediction to eyes that are right, is an agony of dis- 
tress to eyes that are sore. The analogy holds 
with regard to a man who is wrong. He is like an 
open wound when salt gets into it, the pain stirs him 
to annoyance and distress, then spite and hatred. That 
is why they hated Jesus Christ. He was a continual 
annoyance. Or again, nothing is cleaner, or grander, 
or sweeter than light. You cannot soil light. A sun- 
beam may shine into a puddle, but it. never gets dirty. 



176 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

You can soil a white sheet of paper, you can soil al- 
most any white substance, but you cannot soil light. 
When rightly related to God, one can go down and 
work in the most degraded slums of the cities, or the 
vilest parts of heathendom, where all kinds of immor- 
ality are practised, but one is not defiled because God 
keeps us like the light. 

Next (b) My Sociability. Sociability means good 
fellowship. How insistent God is that we keep to- 
gether in fellowship. In the natural world it is only 
by mixing with other people that we get the corners 
rubbed off. That is the way we are made, and God 
takes that principle and transfigures it. "Do not for- 
sake the assembling of yourselves together" is a Scrip- 
tural injunction. 

John 5 : 40-44. In these verses our Lord dis- 
tinctly indicates that there are certain states of 
society He will have nothing to do with. He can- 
not have anything to do with the men who "seek 
honor one of another." He says, in effect, "It is a 
moral impossibility for that man to believe in Me." 
Our Lord is exceeding good company and good fellow- 
ship to the saints. It is "wheresoever two or three are 
gathered in My name, there am I in the midst." Be- 
ware of isolation; beware of getting the idea that "I 
have to develop my holy life alone." It is im- 
possible to develop a holy life alone, you will develop 
into an "oddity" and a "peculiarism," and unlike 
anything God wants you to be. The only way we can 
develop is by getting into the society of God's own 
children, and we will very soon find how God alters 



Ourselves as" Known. ' ' " Me. ' ' 177 

our "set/' He does not contradict our social instincts, 
but He alters them. Jesus Christ says, "Leap for joy 
when men separate you from their company for My 
sake" (not for some crotchety notion or some faddy 
ideas of your own, or some principle you have wedded 
yourself to, but for My sake). When you are true to 
Him, your sociability is lifted to a different sphere. 

"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit 
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.' ' (Eph. 
2:6.) "We are not raised up alone, but together. 
All through, this social instinct is a God-given 
one, ancl whenever a man gets alone, from the 
Bible standpoint, it is always to fit him for public 
society. Getting alone with God is very often such 
a dangerous business that God will very rarely allow 
you to do it unless you are getting into closer con- 
tact with people after. It is contact with one another 
that keeps us full-orbed and well-balanced, not only 
as natural beings, but as spiritual beings also. 

(c) Then My Satisfaction. All these things are 
applicable in the natural world and the spiritual world 
alike. Satisfaction means a comfortable gratification. 
There are certain peculiar people who say if you like 
a thing, you must not do it or have it. They are 
as those who would say, "If you like to go to a prayer- 
meeting, you must not go; if you dislike a ballroom, 
you must go." These people won't have any satisfac- 
tion at all, they think it is a sin. Now satisfaction, and 
the demand for satisfaction, is a God-given principle 
in our human life, and Jesus Christ says, "Blessed 
are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 



178 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

for they shall be filled' 9 (satisfied). Satisfaction is 
a good thing, "comfortable gratification, ' ' but it has 
to be satisfaction in the highest. 

Read Mattthew 10:17-22. That is an extraor- 
dinary passage, and you will wonder why that 
passage has been taken in connection with satisfac- 
tion. The reason is that it indicates the only place 
where satisfaction is to be found — satisfaction in hav- 
ing done God's will. Those verses are very often 
taken and applied to the methods people adopt when 
they speak at meetings. (I have heard a man say 
at a gathering of Christians, "I have not had much 
time to prepare for this morning's address, so I am 
going to give you what the Holy Spirit gives me, 
but I hope to be better prepared this evening." His 
justification, he said, was this very passage.) When you 
go along seeking God's satisfaction in the world of 
men, you are going to come in contact with "open 
wounds," and they are going to hate you, you are 
going to be systematically vexed, persecuted and de- 
tested, and hated "for My sake," says our Lord; and 
"they will put you in all kinds of places suddenly 
where you will be completely humiliated, but when 
you are put there, do not be alarmed, I am there, 
and the Spirit of God will bring to your remem- 
brance what you shall say in those moments." So 
we end where we began, that the social setting of 
my life is the highest — the Trinity. That is why, in 
secret or in public, the one set that I am anxious 
to please is God the Father, God the Son, and God 
the Holy Spirit, and the only sort of people I have 



Ourselves as "Known." "Me.", 1TO 

real communion with are the people who have the 
same dominant note in their lives. Jesus Christ says, 
"Whoever does the will of My Father which is in 
Heaven, the same is My brother, sister and mother." 
3. The Spiritual Me. 

"And hath raised us up together and made us sit 
together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. " (Eph. 2 : 
6.) That verse does not refer to hereafter, but to 
now. My Mind, My Morals, and My Mysticism. 
I have (a) My Own Mind, and my particular 
mind means my particular cast of thought and 
feeling. You ridicule that, and you hurt me. You 
may not know it, but immediately a certain type 
of thought or feeling is ridiculed, someone will 
feel hurt. So it is quite right to put it under 
this category. "And be not conformed to this world, 
but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, 
that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable 
and perfect will of God." (Rom. 12: 2.) One of the 
most wonderful things in your spiritual experience and 
mine is the way God alters and develops our sensi- 
tiveness. There was a time when our mental acts of 
thought and feeling made us amazingly sensitive to 
what certain other people thought and felt ; now God has 
altered that and made us that we are absolutely in- 
different to what they think, but we have become 
amazingly sensitive now to what another set of peo- 
ple think (1 Cor. 4:3, 4); then finally we are only 
sensitive to what God thinks of our cast of thought 
and feeling, and right through we are commissioned 
to be renewed in the spirit of our mind for that 



180 Ourselv.es: I; Me; Mine. 

purpose, viz.: that we "may prove what is that good 
and acceptable and perfect will of God." 

Then (b) My Morals, my standard of moral con- 
duct. Let us take the great verse, "Except your right- 
eausness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes 
and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into 
the kingdom of Heaven.' ' (Matt. 5:20.) The 
practical outcome of that for our lives is 
wonderful. My standard of moral conduct must 
exceed thef standard of the moral upright man and 
woman I know, who lives apart from the grace of 
God. Think of the most upright man, the most worthy 
person you know who has had no experience whatever 
of receiving the Spirit of God, Jesus Christ says in 
effect you have to exceed their rectitude. Instead of 
our Lord lowering the standard of moral conduct, He 
pushes it to a tremendous extreme. You have not 
only to do the right things, but your motives have to 
be right, the springs of your thinking have to be right, 
you have to be so unblameable that God sees nothing 
to censure in your holiness. That is the standard of 
our moral conduct if we are born again of the Spirit 
of God and are going on to obey Him. What 
is my standard of moral conduct? Is it God's 
standard, or the modern one ? The modern standard is 
summed up in one phrase, self-realization. The two 
are diametrically opposed to one another, there is 
no point of reconciliation between them. 

Then (c) My mysticism, my direct and immediate 
communion with God. (Col. 2: 20-23.) Everyone has 
something of that sort whereby he directly goes to 



Ourselves as ' ' Known. ' ' l ' Me. ' ' 181 

God, whether he calls himself religious or not. Mysti- 
cism is a natural ingredient in everybody's make-up 
whether he calls himself "Atheist," or "Agnostic," 
or "Christian." Jesus Christ by the Spirit of God 
alters the whole thing. He does not alter the need 
of our nature, but He puts it on a totally different 
line. We are so mysterious in personality, and there 
are so many forces at work about us which we can- 
not calculate or cope with, that immediately we re- 
fuse to take the guidance of Jesus Christ, we may be, 
and probably will be, deluded by supernatural forces 
far greater than we are. Jesus Christ's way exalts 
everything about us, exalts our bodies, exalts our flesh 
and blood relationship, exalts our homes, exalts our 
social standing, and exalts all the inner part of our 
own life: mind, morals, and mysticism until we have 
at-one-ment with God. 



CHAPTER XV. 

OURSELVES: I; ME; MINE. 

OURSELVES AS "OURSELVES." "SELF." 

The passages alluded to in this outline are exclusively from 
the New Testament; any student can supply Old Testament 
illustrations for his or her own use. 

1 SELF. Luke 18: 9-14. 

(a) Greatness. Mark 12:31. (Comp. 2 Thess. 2:3, 4.) 

(b) Groveling. Luke 15: 19; Luke 5: 8. 

2 SELF-SEEKING. Kom. 15: 1-3. 

(a) Honor. John 5:41-44; John 8:49. 

(b) Humility. Matt. 18: 4; Phil. 2: 1-4. 

3 SELF-ESTIMATION. John 13: 13-17. 

(a) Superiority. Phil. 2: 5-11. 

(b) Inferiority. Matt. 5: 19. 
N. B. Important Definitions. 

(1) Self means: — The sum-total of all a man can call 
"Me" and "Mine." 

(2) Selfishness means: — All that gives me pleasure with- 
out considering Christ's interests. 

(3) Sin means: — Independence of God. 

(4) Surrendering myself to anything or any one other 
than our Lord Jesus Christ and His enterprises is 
the great human crime. 

"My total self includes the whole succession of 
my personal experiences, and it therefore includes 
that special phase of my conscious life in which I 
think of myself/ ' Myself is my conscious person- 
ality. 

There are three divisions to guide our treat- 

182 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. "" Self. " 183 

ment of this subject: Self; Self-seeking; Self -estima- 
tion. 

1. Self. 

(a) Greatness and (b) Groveling. (Luke 18:9-14.) 
Both of those attitudes are wrong in a final analysis 
— one " grovels,' ' and the other swells in " greatness," 
both are expressions of abnormal conditions. Our 
Lord does not teach the annihilation of self, but 
He reveals how self can be rightly centered, and 
the true centre is perfect live to God. (Read 1 
Corinthians 13, with this line of thought in your 
mind, you will understand it in a practical way. 
"Perfect love" means perfect love towards God, and 
it takes no account of the evil that is done it. Until 
I get myself rightly related there, I either grovel or 
swell in greatness.) The attitudes of conscious great- 
ness or groveling are both of them untrue and needing 
to be put right. The true centre for myself is Jesus 
Christ. 

(a) Greatness. (Mark 12:31.) The first com- 
mandment is not loving my neighbor, but loving God 
with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my 
soul and with all my strength, then I can love my 
neighbor as myself. You will find that this is at 
the heart of all the revelation in Jesus Christ. 
Jesus Christ revealed the right centre for myself, 
and revealed that true centre to be God, and 
personal, passionate devotion to Him; then only 
shall I be able to show the same love to my fellowmen 
that God showed to me. Until I get there, I will 
either take the position of the Pharisee, or I will take 



184 Ourselves : I ; Me ; Mine. 

the position of the publican. I will either thank God 
that I am not an out-and-out sinner, and point out 
certain people who are worse than I am; or else 
I will grovel in the other extreme. Both attitudes are 
wrong because they have not been truly centred. How 
could this Pharisee love his neighbor as himself? It 
was impossible, he had not gotten the true centre 
for himself. Self-realization was his centre, and every 
time he compared himself with the publican, instead 
of loving the publican, it increased his self-conceit. 
Immediately I get rightly related to God, have per- 
fect love toward Him, then I have the same relation- 
ship to my fellowmen that God has to me. I can 
love my fellowmen as I love myself. That is the 
thing that keeps a man from taking account of the 
evil that is done towards him. If I love my God best, 
base ingratitude to me I take no account 6i because 
the mainspring of my service to my fellowmen arises 
from my love to God. When a man gets rightly re- 
lated by the atonement of Jesus Christ to God, he 
begins to understand what the apostle Paul meant 
when he said, "We do not preach ourselves (self- 
realization), but we preach Jesus Christ as Lord, and 
ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake." The 
point is very practical and clear, if you will 
look at it for one moment. If I love a person 
very much and he treats me unkindly and un- 
generously, the very fact that I love him makes me 
feel it all the more, and yet Paul says, "Love taketh no 
account of the evil that is done to it." Why? Be- 
cause self is absorbed, and taken up with love to 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " " Self. ' ' 185 

Jesus Christ, and certainly if you are going to live 
for the service of your fellowmen, you are going to 
be pierced through with many sorrows, unless you love 
God. You are going to meet with more base ingrati- 
tude from your fellowmen than you would from a 
dog, and you will meet with unkindness and "two- 
facedness," and if your motive is love for your fellow- 
men, you will be exhausted in the battle of life; but 
if your motive springs from a central love to God, 
there is no ingratitude, no sin, no devil, no angel 
can hinder you from serving your fellowmen, no 
matter how they 1 treat you, because the mainspring 
of the service is love to God. Then I can love my 
neighbor as myself, not from pity, but from the real 
and the true centering of myself in God. 

•(b) Groveling. "And am no more worthy to 
be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired serv- 
ants." (Luke 15:19.) "When Simon Peter saw it, 
he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, 'Depart from 
me, for I am a sinful man, Lord.' " (Luke 5:8.) 
This is a stage everyone goes through when convicted 
of sin, and we always get a wrong estimate of our- 
selves when we are convicted of sin. The prodigal's 
estimate of himself is beyond where the father placed 
it, and whenever we are convicted of sin by the Spirit 
of God the same thing happens. The balance is upset, 
the health of our body is upset, the health of our 
mind and our heart is upset, the balance is pushed 
right out by conviction of sin. Sin is a thing that 
puts man's self out of centre altogether — eccentric — 
and when the Spirit of God convicts him, the man 



186 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

is wrongly related to everything. He knows he is 
wrongly related to God and to his own body, and to 
everything round about him, and he is in a state 
of abject misery. The other picture is the one 
we first dealt with, the picture of a man who 
who is not convicted of sin, and who consequently 
takes himself to be as God. If you watch carefully 
the tendencies that are all around us to-day, you will 
find that that is the characteristic tendency: "ignore 
sin; deny it ever was; if you make mistakes, forget 
them; live the healthy-minded, open-hearted, sunshiny 
life; do not allow yourself to be convicted of sin." 
They tell you that as you realize yourself to be God, 
you will attain perfeetness. There is no repentance, 
no conviction of sin, and no forgiveness of sin. The 
Holy Spirit opens, not only my eyes, but my heart 
and my conscience to the horror of the thing that 
is wrong inside, and immediately He does, I get to 
the groveling stage. Conviction of sin consumes a 
man's beauty, the Psalmist says, "like the moth." 
His "beauty" means the perfectly ordered complete- 
ness of his whole nature. The Pharisee doesn't grovel, 
there is a certain beauty of order about a conceited 
man, a certain conformity with himself. He feels all 
right, he is of the nature of a crystal, clear and com- 
pact and hard. Immediately the Spirit of God con- 
victs him, all the hardness crumbles and he comes to 
the opposite extreme, in solution, as it were. Jesus 
Christ's salvation takes a man that has been broken 
on the wheel by conviction of sin, and been rendered 
plastic by the Spirit, and re-moulds him and makes 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " ' ' Self. p ' 187 

him a vessel fit for God's glory. Self, then, is not to 
be annihilated, it is to be rightly centralized in God. 
Self-realization has to be turned into Christ-realization. 
Our Lord never taught "deeper death to self," He 
taught deeth, right out, to "my right to myself," to my 
own self-realization. He taught that the principal pur- 
pose of my creation is "to glorify God and to enjoy 
Him forever," and the whole sum total of my life is 
to be consciously centered in God. 

2. Self -Seeking. (Rom. 15:1-3.) 

Romans 15 : 3 holds the whole thing in explanation. 
The "reproaches of those that reproached Thee fell on 
me. ' ' What reproaches fell on Jesus ? Everything that 
was hurled against God in slander, hurt our Lord. 
The slanders that were hurled against Jesus Christ 
Himself never touched Him, they made not the slightest 
impression on Him, His suffering was on account of 
His Father. On what account do you suffer? Do you 
suffer because men speak ill of you? Read Hebrews 
12:2: "Consider Him that endured such contradiction 
of sinners against Himself, lest ye be weary and faint 
in your minds." Perfect love taketh no account of 
the evil that is done unto it. It is the reproaches that 
hit and scandalize the true centre of Christ's life that 
He noticed in pain. What was the true centre of 
Christ's life? Absolute devotion to God the Father's 
will, and as surely as you get Christ-centralized 
you will understand what the apostle Paul meant 
w;hen he said, "Filling up what remains behind of His 
sufferings." You could not touch Christ on the line 
of self-pity. The whole practical emphasis here is 



188 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

that service is not from pity, but from a personal, pas- 
sionate love to God, longing to see many more brought 
into the centre where God has brought us. 

(a) Honor. (John 5:41-44; 8:49.) The whole 
centre of the honor of our Lord's life was His Father's. 
He was " without reputation." They heaped every 
kind of scandal it was possible for them to think of 
on the name of Jesus Christ, and He never once at- 
tempted to clear Himself. But once let a man or 
woman show any attitude of dishonor toward His 
Father, and instantly you see Jesus Christ ablaze in 
zeal; "and as He is, so are we in this world/ ' says 
St. John. He changes the centre of our self-love. 
What is my honor? Is my honor God's honor? Are 
they identically the same, as they were in Jesus Christ? 
Let the following sentences analyze us : We are scand- 
alizeci at immorality. Why? Because God's honor is 
at stake*? Is it not rather because our social honor is 
upset and antagonized. As saints, we should smart and 
suffer keenly every time we see pride, covetousness, 
self-realization, because these are the things that go 
against God's honor. God's honor and the honor of 
His saints are one and the same thing. "You have 
not the love of God in you," said Jesus Christ, and He 
also pointed out that it was a moral impossibility for 
them to believe. There is not any man who can believe 
in Jesus Christ who has another standard of honor. 
Jesus Christ exalts the standard of honor, and puts 
it alongside God's throne. Take the eleventh chapter 
of John. What was the real under-current? "He was 
moved with indignation" because their attitude ac- 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " " Self. ' ■ 189 

cepted the scandal against His Father. As soon as 
death came on the scene, they accepted its interpre- 
tation against all God's goodness. The only thing 
that ever roused Jesus Christ was the thing that 
brought His Father's honor into disrepute. In the tem- 
ple, instead of seeing "a meek and gentle" Jesus, we 
see a* terrible Being with a whip of small cords in 
His hands. 

"Why could not He have driven them out in a 
gentler way? Because passionate zeal had eaten Him 
up, the enthusiasm and detestation against everything 
that dared to call into dishonor His Father's honor 
moved Him, and you will find exactly the same char- 
acteristics in the saints. You cannot rouse them on 
the line of personal interest, you cannot rouse them 
along, the line of self-pity, you cannot rouse them 
along the line of self-realization ; but once let a thing 
go contrary to Jesus Christ's honor, and instantly you 
will find your' meek and gentle saint a holy terror. 
The meaning of that phrase in the Bible, "the wrath 
of the Lamb" is realisable along this line. The ob- 
verse side of love is hate. 

(b) Humility. (Matt. 18 : 4 ; Phil. 2 : 1-4.) Those 
two passages in the New; Testament are a wonderful 
revelation, viz. : that the true disposition of a saint 
manifested in this order of things is humility. Take the 
case of the little child. The disciples had been discuss- 
ing who would be the greater, and Jesus took a very 
little child in His arms, and said, "Unless you become 
like that, you will never" see the kingdom of Heaven." 
Now, did He put that little child up as an ideal? If 



190 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

He did, He destroyed the whole principle of His teach- 
ing. If humility is an ideal, this will increase pride. 
Humility is not an ideal, humility is the unconscious 
result of life being rightly related to God and centred 
in Him. Our Lord is pulling down ambition, and if 
He put a little child as a. standard for men, He simply 
altered pride's manifestation, that is all. But He did 
not. "What is a little child? "We all know What a 
child is. until we are asked, and then we do not know. 
We can only mention its extra goodness or badness, 
but neither of those is the child. We all know implic- 
itly what a child is, and we all know implicitly what 
Jesus Christ meant, but immediately you try to put 
it into words, it escapes. Language won't bear the 
strain you have to put upon it to define a little chili 
We can only come near a description of it. The 
child works from an unconscious principle inside, and 
if we are born again of the Spirit of Ood and follow 
and obey the Spirit of God, we will manifest this humil- 
ity unconsciously all along the line. We will easily 
be the servant of all men, because we cannot help it, 
not because it is our ideal. Our conscious eye is not on 
our service, but on our Savior. 

There is nothing more awful in this world than 
conscious humility, it is the most Satanic type of 
pride. A person who consciously serves you is worse 
than the Pharisee who is eaten up with conceit. Jesus 
Christ did not raise humility as an ideal; He pre- 
sented it, like He did the Sermon on the Mount, 
as a description of what we will be unconsciously 
when we are* rightly related to God and rightly 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " " Self. ■ ' 191 

centred. Our centre will be God's honor, and our 
humility among men will never be understood by- 
anybody who is not Christ-centred in the same manner. 
This attitude is portrayed over and over again. Peter 
said, "They do not understand why you do not go to 
the same excess of riot you used to." Jesus says, 
"Leap for joy when men separate you from their com- 
pany for My name's sake." The centre of the life 
is altered, and the worldling is hopelessly "at sea" in 
trying to find out the centre from which the Christian 
works, and it ends for the worldling's mind in ridicule. 
The end of the analysis of a Christian from a 
worldly standpoint is not attraction, but ridicule. The 
apostle Paul said that what he preached was to the 
Greeks (the people who sought wisdom) stupidity, un- 
utterable stupidity, and you will find the same is the 
attitude of the dispensation we live in to-day. A saint 
arouses interest for a little while; when things go ill 
he arouses deep interest, but when things go well, 
the interest gradually changes into ridicule, and then 
into absolute ignoring, because the centre of life is 
altered, centred in some one the world does not see — 
God ! Immediately the Christian complies to standards 
of this world, instantly the world recognizes it, but 
when a Christian works from the real standard, 
which is God, the world cannot recognize it, cannot 
understand it, and consequently has to ignore or rid- 
icule it. You will find strong antagonism pointed out 
by Jesus over and over again, and in the Epistles, 
by the Spirit, between the spirit of the world and the 
Spirit of God, a, deeply rooted antagonism, and what 



192 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

we have to realize as Christian people more and more 
is that if we are going to obey the Spirit of God, we 
are going to be detested and ridiculed and ignored by 
the people who are centred in self-realization. 

Our attitude in a dispensation like this will mani- 
fest itself in humility that cannot sting us into action 
on our own account. That is the thing that maddens 
the " prince of this world/ ' but once let the prince 
of this world and his minions scandalize Jesus Christ, 
begin to misrepresent Him, and the weakest saint be- 
comes a giant, and will go to martyrdom any time 
and anywhere all the world over for the Lord Jesus 
Christ. (You hear it said to-day that the spirit of 
martyrdom has died out; the spirit of martyrdom 
is here. Let any scandal arise against Jesus Christ, 
and where you had one martyr in the past you will 
have many to-day who will stand true to the honor 
of the Lord Jesus Christ.) 

What is my self-seeking? I have to have self- 
seeking. If my self is truly centred, my seeking is 
God's honor. God's honor is at stake by my eyes, 
by my hands and feet, His honor is at stake wher- 
ever I take my body. I am the temple of the Holy 
Ghost, therefore I have to see that this body is 
the obedient slave of the disposition Jesus Christ put 
in to stand for Him. My self-centredness is to be 
God, and love for Him. Suppos ethis question arises, 
"I believe that I ought to love God like this, but how 
am I going to do it? Where am I to begin to let the 
tremendous flow of love toward God come in? I agree 
emphatically that I ought to love God, but how; can I?" 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " " Self. ' ' 193 

Romans 5 : 5 is a very practical solution: "Because the 
love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
Spirit which is given unto us." Have you received 
the Holy Spirit? If not, Luke 11:13 will help you: 
"If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts 
unto your children, how much more shall your Heav- 
enly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask 
Him?" Also the last verse in John 17 : "That the love 
wherewith Thou hast loved Me may be in them, and I 
in them." Ask God to answer Jesus Christ's prayer. 
There is no excuse for any person not having the prob- 
lem answered in his own life. My natural heart 
is not the lover of God; the Holy Ghost is the lover 
of God, and immediately He comes in He will turn 
my heart into a loving centre for God; personal, pas- 
sionate, overwhelming devotion to Jesus Christ. (God 
and Jesus Christ are synonymous terms in our practical 
experience.) When the Holy Spirit comes in, and 
sin and self-interest are in the road, He will instantly 
discern them to us, and we will have to give our con- 
sent that He clears them out. He will clear the 
whole lot out as soon as we give our consent, un- 
til the body is incandescent with this love to God. 
Jude says, "Keep yourselves in the love of God. ' ' That 
does not mean, keep on loving God, it is infinitely pro- 
founder than that. It means, "Keep your soul open 
to the fact that God loves you," and His love will be 
continually flowing through you to others. 

Two terms of modern psychology are of importance 
here — ' ' Projective ' ' and ' ' E jective. ' ' Projective means 
thai I see in another person the qualities I have not 



194 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

got, but want. Ejective means that I attribute my 
qualities and my defects to the other person. The 
latter is the most remarkable line of solution for judg- 
ing. When I come to the ejective method, I go on 
this line, "Yes, I know exactly what that person 
meant.' ' "When somebody has trespassed against me, 
instantly I impute to him every mean motive I would 
have been guilty of if I had been in his condition. 
"Therefore thou art inexcusable, thou that judg- 
est. ' ' In the sixth chapter of Matthew, Jesus puts 
the forgiveness of my trespasses on the ground 
that I forgive the people that trespass against 
me, and if I go on the ejective method, I won't forgive. 
I simply attribute to them what I would be capable of 
doing myself in the way of meanness in similar circum- 
stances. The statement that we only see what we 
bring with us the power of seeing, is perfectly correct. 
If you see meanness and wrong and evil in other per- 
sons, then take the self -judgment at once — that is what 
you would be guilty of if you were in their condition. 
The searching light of the Scriptures comes over and 
over again on that line, and we find out when we come 
to the last point, Self-estimation, that there is no room 
in any Christian for cynicism. 

3. Self -Estimation. (John 13:13-17.) 
That is an iteration of the same point, viz.: that 
myself must be truly centred in God. Is it? Is my 
self Christ-centred or self-centred? When I am in 
difficult circumstances, does the disposition in me make 
me say, "Now, why has this happened to me?" That 
disposition was never in the Lord Jesus Christ. Every 



Ourselves as ' ' Ourselves. " " Self. " 195 

set of circumstances He ever got into, whenever His 
consciousness showed itself, it was His Father's honor, 
not His own that occupied Him. "Myself " is a human 
edition for God to glorify Himself by. "Let this mind 
"be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.'' (Phil. 2 : 5.) 
Could anything be more practical than that statement, 
or more profound? The mind of man shows itself in 
his speech and in his actions. The mind of Christ 
showed itself in His actions and in His speech. Did 
you ever notice what it was that Satan antagonised in 
Jesus Christ? God-realization. He wanted to alter 
that centre. "Do God's work your own way, you 
are His Son, work from that centre. " "I came not 
to do My will, but the will of Him that sent Me," is 
our Lord's implied meaning all the way through the 
temptations; and as He was tempted, so are we when 
once we are rightly related to God through Him. Take 
that passage in Revelation: "I have this against you, 
you have left your first love." All the rest become? 
of no account. To get eccentric, off the centre, is ex- 
actly what Satan wants us to do. He does not goad or 
tempt to immorality; one thing he makes his business, 
and that is to dethrone God's rule in the heart. The su- 
periority of Christ's self was that He was God-centered. 
Is that the superiority of yourself? "He that gather- 
eth not with me scattereth," our Lord said, and all 
morality, all goodness, all religion, and all spirituality 
that is not Christ-centered is drawing away from Jesus 
Christ all the time. All the teaching of Jesus weaves 
round the question of self. It is, "Oh, to be some- 
thing, something!" aggressively and powerfully some- 



196 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

thing, uncrushably something, something that stands 
next to God's throne, on the rock, in whom God can 
walk and talk and move and do what He likes, because 
the self is personally in love with God, not absorbed 
into God, but a personal, passionate love to God. 

Look at the "N. B.V in the outline. The one 
we need particularly to notice is " Selfishness/ ' Sel- 
fishness means all that gives me pleasure without 
considering Christ 's interest. If you talk about selfish- 
ness and its badness, you are going to have the sym- 
pathy of everybody ; but if you talk about unselfishness 
from Jesus Christ's standpoint, you are going to arouse 
the interest of very few and the antipathy of a great 
many. Have you ever noticed that my sympathy for 
my fellowmen is quite likely to rouse my antagonism 
to God? Unless I have my relationship to God right, 
my sympathy for man will lead me and them astray; 
but immediately I get right with God, then I can love 
my neighbor as myself. How did God love me? He 
loved me to the end of my sinfulness, all my self-will, 
all my selfishness, all my stiff-neckedness, all my pride, 
and all my self-interest. Then I can show my neighbor 
the same love. That is Christianity in practical work- 
ing order, "Love as I have loved you." The same 
love, the same overflow and the same outflow that God 
showed to me shall I show to my fellowmen. 

Then we will take Surrender. We have dealt with 
this subject often enough — surrendering myself to 
any one or anything other than Jesus Christ and His 
enterprises is the great human crime. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OURSELVES: I; ME; MINE. 

OURSELVES AND CONSCIENCE. 

CONSCIENCE is the innate law in nature whereby man 
knows he is known. 

N. B. The half truth and half error of such phrases as ' ' Con- 
science is the voice of God" and " Conscience can be edu- 
cated' ' will be carefully dealt with. 

1 CONSCIENCE BEFOBE THE TALL. Gen. 2: 16, 17; 

3:2, 3. 

(a) Consciousness of Self. 

(b) Consciousness of the World. 

(c) Consciousness of God. Gen. 3: 1-24. 

These three are the several sides of man's personal life. 

2 CONSCIENCE AFTEB THE FALL. John 3: 19-21. 

(a) The Standard of the Natural Person. Bom. 2: 12, 15. 

(b) The Standard of the Nations — Pagan. Matt. 25: 
31-46. 

(c) The Standard of the Naturally Pious. Acts 26: 9; 
John 16: 2. 

3 CONSCIENCE IN THE FAITHFUL. 1 Cor. 8:7, 12. 

(a) Conscience and Character in the Saint. Bom. 9:1; 
John 17: 22. 

(b) Conscience and Conduct in the Saint. 2 Cor. 1: 12. 

(c) Conscience and Communion of the Saints. 1 John 
1: 7; Eph. 4: 13; Heb. 9: 14. 

"Conscience is the innate law in human nature 
whereby man knows he is known. " From every stand- 
point that is a safeguarded definition of conscience. 

Look at the N. B. at the head of the outline. If 
conscience were the "voice of God," it would be 
the most contradictory voice man ever heard. For 

197 



198 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

instance, a Hindoo mother obeys her conscience by 
treating her child cruelly, and the Christian mother 
obeys her conscience by sending her child to Sun- 
day-school, and bringing it up generally in the "nur- 
ture and admonition of the Lord." If conscience 
were the voice of God, great contrasts of that kind 
would never happen. "Conscience attaches itself to 
that system of things which man regards as highest.' ' 
Consequently you will find that what conscience records 
is very different in different people. The Hindoo moth- 
er's conscience attaches itself to the highest she knows, 
viz. : Hindoo religion ; the Christian conscience of the 
Christian mother attaches itself to the highest she 
knows, viz. : the revelation in the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Probably the best illustration of conscience is the 
human eye. The eye records what it looks at. Con- 
science may be pictured as the eye of the soul, re- 
cording what it looks at, and it will always record 
exactly what it is turned towards. One thing we soon 
lose in human sight is what Ruskin called the "inno- 
cence of the eye." By the "innocence of the eye" he 
means this — that the majority of us know what we 
look at, and we try to tell ourselves what our eye sees. 
An artist, records exactly from the "innocence" of 
sight; he does not use his logical faculties. In 
training art students in sketching from nature, you 
will find that in looking at a distant hill draped in blue 
mist, with little touches of white or color here and there, 
the beginner will sketch not what he sees, but what he 
knows those blotches indicate, viz.: houses; while the 
artist will give you the presentation of what he "sees," 



Ourselves and Conscience. 199 

not what you know he sees. Now something very sim- 
ilar happens in conscience. The record of conscience 
may be distorted or perverted, and conscience itself 
may be seared. 

Then, again, if you throw a white light on trees, 
the eye will record that the trees are green; if you 
throw a yellow light on trees, the eye will record that 
the trees are blue ; if you throw a red light on trees, 
the eye will record that the trees are brown. Now, 
your logical faculties will tell you all the time that 
they are green (because daylight is white light), but 
the illustration I am using is that the eye has no busi- 
ness other than to record; and conscience does the 
same thing. 

Let us get back to the illustration of the Hindoo 
mother and the Christian mother. The Hindoo mother's 
conscience looks out on what she is taught by her 
Hindoo religion to be God, and her conscience records 
exactly what it looks at and she, reasoning on the 
records of conscience, does the thing that is cruel. 
The Christian mother looks at God in the " white light" 
of Jesus Christ, consequently her conscience records 
exactly what it sees, and reasoning on it, she behaves 
as Christian mothers ought to behave. So it never can 
be true to call conscience "the voice of God." The 
varieties of the records of people's consciences are 
accounted for by the various traditional religions, etc. 
It does not matter whether a person is religious or not, 
his conscience attaches itself to the highest he or she 
knows, and reasoning according to that, guides the 
life. 



200 Ourselves: Ij Me; Mine. 

The other phrase that "Conscience can be edu- 
cated/ ' is again a truth that is half an error. Con- 
science cannot be educated, strictly speaking. What 
is altered and educated is a man's reasoning, and a man 
reasons not only on what his senses bring him, but what 
his conscience brings him, and immediately you face a 
man with the white light of Jesus Christ (we call 
Jesus Christ the white light, for white embraces all 
the other colors and shades of light; it is the pure, 
true light), the conscience records exactly, and the 
reason is startled and amazed. When a man g«ets 
rightly adjusted to God, his conscience staggers* him, 
and his reason condemns him from all standpoints. 

1. Conscience Before the Fall. (Gen. 2:16, 17; 
3:2,3.) 

Now, originally in our language the words* "con- 
sciousness" and "conscience" meant the same' thing; 
they do not mean the same now. In "Conscience before 
the Fair' we have to- take the three sides, or facts, of 
a man's personal life — .consciousness of self, conscious- 
ness of the world, and consciousness of God. 

"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 
Of every tree of the garden thou mayesit freely eat; 
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou 
shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest 
thereof thou, shalt surely die." (Gen. 2:16, 17.) 

"And the woman said unto the serpent, We may 
eat of the fruit of the trees of the ga'rden, but of the 
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, 
God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye 
touch it, lest ye di<\" (Gen. 3: 2, 3.) 



Ourselves and Conscience. 201 

There in both passages the three sides or facts are 
clear — consciousness of myself, consciousness of the 
world around me, and consciousness of God. It is the 
last that has gotten most conspicuously blurred by the 
Fall. Consciousness of self (a) takes us back to the 
first subject we dealt with, viz.: the general sub- 
ject of "Man," and you will find there that when the 
other creations were passed before man in procession, 
there was not found a helpmeet for Adam; he had no 
affinity with the brutes, instantly distinguishing man 
clearly and emphatically from all the brute creation 
round about him. There is no evidence that a brute 
is ever conscious of itself, but man is ostensibly so 
conscious. 

Second, (b) he is conscious of the world. I mean by 
the world the thing that is not himself ; the strict word 
for it would be " continuum/ ' i. e., that which con- 
tinues to exist outside of me. It is by understanding 
how we, as men and women, come into contact with 
what is not ourselves that we will understand our 
barriers and our limitations. We can never under- 
stand what an angel 's consciousness is like, nor what 
a dog's consciousness is like, because both these crea- 
tions are constituted differently. 

First of all, then, let us look at this question, 
"How do I come in contact with what is not myself V 7 
By a nervous system. Eemember, the body of man is 
his glory, not his drawback. The body is the thing 
that makes and manifests his character. The body 
is not an accident, but is essential to the order of 
creation we belong to. Consequently we can always 



202 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

say, up to a certain point, how a human being sees 
things outside. The more you think on that line of 
things, obvious and common sense as it is, the clearer 
will become the basis of Christian philosophy. 

"How do angels come in contact with what is not 
themselves V ' Certainly not by nerves, therefore we 
have no possibility of knowing how an angel comes in 
contact with what is not angelic. Read the record of 
angelic appearances in the Bible, of our Lord after 
the resurrection; physical barriers simply did not 
exist to them. They exist to us by means of our 
nervous system. Angels seem to come and go through 
rocks and doors, appearing and disappearing alto- 
gether in a way we cannot understand. That is 
a consciousness which is above mine, different from 
mine. Jesus did not take on Him the consciousness 
of a man ; that is, Jesus Christ came down where man 
was, in the same world; He came into the world we 
are in, and took on Him a body and a nervous system 
like we have, and saw the world just as we see it, and 
came in contact with it just as we do. Whenever 
anybody writes or speculates as to how an angel sees 
and knows, put underneath it "private speculation, ' ' 
and you will always find that God's Book draws the 
barrier strong, "Thus far and no farther." We only 
know consciousness of ourselves and consciousness of 
what is outside us by means of a nervous system; all 
our conscious life depends on our nerves. The world 
"goes out" w r hen we are asleep, we are not conscious 
at all, what has happened? The nervous system is 
not working. An anesthetic makes the WQrld "ga 



Ourselves and Conscience. 203 

out." Why we must shut a lunatic up in an asylum is 
that a lunatic's nervous system differently relates him 
to the world from the majority of men, consequently a 
lunatic very often becomes dangerous, he does not 
record what he sees outside as we do, and the conse- 
quence is he becomes so different that we have to 
confine him. 

Now, on the other hand, look at the lower animals. 
There is a great amount said about the intelligence of 
dogs and a great amount of insight, falsely so called, in- 
to the nature of a dog. A dog seems to be the most hu- 
man of all animals, but we have no means of knowing 
how a dog sees what is not itself; we simply take our 
own consciousness and transfer it to the dog. We have 
no more means of knowing how a dog sees than we have 
of how an angel sees. These barriers above us and be- 
low us are essential to our knowledge. Spiritualists 
in all times have denied that they are essential; they 
say we can know, we can come in contact with and 
understand how an angel sees things. 

"Your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost," and 
we are held responsible for the way we manifest that 
through our bodies to the external world. That ex- 
plains what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5: 17: "If any 
man is in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation, old things 
have passed away, behold all things have become new." 
You will ever find that when a man gets a great altera- 
tion inwardly, his nervous system is altered. When- 
ever the grace of God works effectually in a man's in- 
ner nature, it alters his nervous system and he instantly 
begins to see things differently. The external world 



204 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

around him begins to take on a new guise. Why? Be- 
cause he has a new disposition. If any man is in 
Christ Jesus, his nervous system will prove that 
he is a "new creation," meaning by that, that he be- 
gins to see things differently. 

"Heaven above is softer blue, 

Earth around is sweeter green, 
Something lives in every hue 

Christless eyes have never seen; 
Birds with gladder songs overflow, 

Flowers with deeper beauties shine, 
Since I know, as now I know, 

I am His and He is mine." 

That is not only poetry, it is a fact. 

Then take the last fact of primal consciousness 
(c) Consciousness of God. In Genesis 2 these three 
types of consciousness are quite clearly manifest in 
the way Eve talked to the serpent. She was conscious 
of the surroundings, she was conscious of herself, and 
she was conscious of God. In Jesus Christ those three 
consciousnesses are perfectly clear; in us they are 
not. This latter consciousness is quite obliterated, and 
you will find men miscall all kinds of things "God." 
Any system of things a man considers highest he is 
apt to call God. The God-consciousness in Adam was 
quite different from our natural consciousness ; it was 
just like it was in our Lord. Those three facts of 
a man's personal life are restored by Jesus Christ to 
their more than pristine vigor; we get into real, 
definite communion with God through Jesus Christ; 
we get to a right relationship with our fellowmen 
and the world outside, and we get to a right rela- 



Ourselves and Conscience. 205 

tionship with ourselves; we get Christ-centered, and 
not self-centered. 

2. Conscience after the Fall. (John 3:19-21.) 

That is where we live to-day, viz.: a mixture of 
Christian and non-Christian, and a great many in 
between who are neither one nor the other. John 
3 : 19-21 is the fundamental analysis. " Light is come in- 
to the world, and men loved darkness rather than 
the light, because their deeds were evil." You ask, 
"What is light ?" Jesus says, "I am the light." He 
said to His disciples, "If the light in you be darkness, 
how great is that darkness." Darkness in this connec- 
tion is "my own point of view." Immediately a man 
sees Jesus Christ and understands who He is, that 
instant he is criticised and self -condemned ; there is no 
further excuse. Our Lord, then, is the final standard. 

(a) The standard of the "natural person," the 
person without Jesus, who has never seen or heard 
of Him; (b) the standard of the "nations — pagan." 
who likewise know nothing about Jesus Christ, and 
(e) the standard of the "naturally pious." 

(a) In Romans 2 : 12-15, the contrast is drawn 
very clearly and emphatically between what we may 
call "religious people" and the irreligious. Yv'hat 
is the standard of judgment? The Gentiles knew 
nothing about Jesus Christ or the law of God in an 
external standard; so they are judged according 
to their consciences. Take the grossest case we can 
think of — there is no case of a cannibal tribe any- 
where on record, where they ate a man and thought 
they were doing right ; they always tried to conceal it. 



206 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

(b) Take the standard of the pagan. (Matt. 25 : 31- 
46.) These verses are often applied to Christians, but 
the primary reference is to the judgment of the nations. 
The standard for Christians is not the twenty-fifth 
chapter of Matthew; the standard for Christians is 
our Lord Jesus Christ. But in the twenty-fifth of 
Matthew the standard is very clear, and God's mag- 
nanimous interpretation of the acts of people is re- 
vealed, and they are amazed and astounded — "When 
did we see you sick? "We never heard of you before." 
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these 
My brethren, ye did it unto Me." The standard of 
the "natural person" is conscience; the standard of 
the "nations" is conscience. 

(c) Then the standard of the "naturally pious." 
(Acts 26 : 9.) That was according to his conscience. If 
conscience is the voice of God, ye have a nice problem to 
solve ! Saul was the acme of conscientiousness. In John 
16: 2 there is the same thing: "They shall put you out 
of the synagogues, yea, the time cometh that whosoever 
killeth you will think that he doeth God service. Obe- 
dience to what is understood to be conscience. Jesus 
Christ says they will think they serve God in putting 
you to death. And no one who has read the life of the 
apostle Paul and his own record also, will ever accuse 
him of being unconscientious; he was hyper-conscien- 
tious. The conscience is the standard for men and wo* 
men to be judged by until they have been brought into 
contact with the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not sufficient 
for a Christian to walk up to the light of his con- 



Ourselves and Conscience. 207 

science; lie must walk in a sterner light, in the light 
of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

3. Conscience in the Faithful. (1 Cor. 8:7-12.) 
(1 Cor. 8:7-12.) These verses show us how we 
can be like "spectacles" for other Christians. In the 
natural life, when the sight is wrong, "spectacles" 
are put on the outside to adjust the vision. "We 
have to be a kind of "spectacles" to other Christian 
people. So many are short-sighted, and so many are 
long-sighted, so many have not the right kind of sight. 
Be "spectacles" to them! A very humble position, 
but a very good one. There is in this First Epistle to 
the Corinthians Paul's distinction between "equal 
rights" and "equal duties," the former being wrong. 
You will find that they have been criticising Paul, and 
from the seventh chapter he deals with their questions, 
and evidently the whole thing is this question of 
"equal rights," and he says, "No! equal duties, but 
not equal rights." "We all have duties to per- 
form towards God, but not equal rights. His states- 
manlike manner of dealing with this matter is very 
wonderful. There is a difference between "offence" 
and "stumbling." The Authorized Version translates 
indiscriminately "offence" and "stumbling"; the Re- 
vised Version corrects this. What is the difference? 
Giving "offence" is sometimes part of moral character; 
it is sometimes moral duty to give "offence." Offence 
means going contrary to some one's private opinion. 
Did Jesus Christ know that He was offending the 
private opinions of the Pharisees when He allowed 
His disciples to eat corn on Sunday? Did He know 



208 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

He was offending the Pharisees when He healed the 
sick on the Sabbath day? But our Lord never put 
an occasion of stumbling in anybody's way. (The 
passage that alludes to Him as "a rock of stumbling 
and a stone of offence'' refers to a different thing.) 
Stumbling is quite a different thing from offence. For 
instance, somebody loves you very much, and does 
not know God as well as you do, but they continually 
do what you do because they love you, and as you 
watch them, you begin to discern that they are de- 
generating spiritually, and to your amazement you 
find it is because they are doing what you are doing. 
There is no offence, but they are stumbling, distinctly 
stumbling. Then Paul says, "I will never do those 
things again as long as I live whereby my brother 
stumbles. I do not insist on my rights, or my liberty 
of conscience; I do exactly the opposite." You will 
find he works it out from every standpoint in this 
First Epistle. "I reserve the right to suffer the loss 
of all things rather than be a hindrance to the Gospel/ ' 
"Waive aside your liberty of conscience if it is go- 
ing to be the means of some one stumbling. The 
application is the application of the Sermon on the 
Mount in practical experience. The Sermon on the 
Mount, to put it very briefly and crudely, simply means 
that if you are My disciple, you will always do more 
than your duty. You will always be doing some- 
thing equivalent to the "second mile." People will 
say, "What a fool you are! Why don't you insist 
on your rights?" Jesus Christ says, "If you are My 
disciple, y[ou will always be doing these things." 



Ourselves and Conscience. 209 

That is the way we can be spectacles to make other 
people see. 

God educates every one of us from the great big 
principles down to the little scruples. You find 
people who are right with God guilty of the most 
ugly characteristics, and you are astounded that 
they do not see it; but they don't. But wait; 
if they go on with God, slowly and surely God's Spirit 
educates them from the general principles down to 
the particular items, until after a while they are as 
careful as can be down to the "jots" and "tittles" of 
life, whereby they prove their sanctification in the 
growing manifestation in their physical lives of the 
new disposition God has given. No wonder the Book 
of God says we need to be patient with one another! 

(a) Character in the Saint. Character is the sum 
total of a man's actions. You cannot judge a man 
because he does good things at times; you must take 
the whole of the times together, and if in the greater 
number of times he does the bad things, he is 
a bad character in spite of the noble things he does 
intermittently. You cannot judge your character be- 
cause you once spoke kindly to your grandmother, if 
the majority of other times you did the other things. 
The fact that people say, "Oh, well, he does do 
good things occasionally," means that he is a bad 
character. The very statement is a condemnation. 
Any of us who do good things occasionally are sure 
to be bad. It is only when we do good things almost 
always and wrong things only occasionally that we 
are good characters. What are conscience and char- 



210 Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

acter in a saint? The disposition of Jesus Christ per- 
sistently manifested. You cannot appeal to saints on 
the line of self-interest; you can only appeal to them 
on the line of the interests of Christ. Whose honor 
do you seek? The feeblest, weakest saint will become 
a holy terror immediately you scandalize Jesus Christ. 

(b) Conscience and Conduct in the Saint. "For 
our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, 
that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly 
wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our 
conversation in the world, and more abundantly to 
youward." (2 Cor. 1: 12.) The point there is a very 
important one; the knowledge of evil that came 
through the Fall gives man a broad mind, but par- 
alyzes his action. The restoration of a man by our 
Lord gives him simplicity, and simplicity always shows 
itself in actions. Do not call simplicity stupidity. 
Simplicity here means the simplicity that was in Jesus 
Christ. Paul says, "I am afraid you will be taken 
away from the simplicity that is in Jesus Christ. '' 
You get men and women of the world who know evil, 
whose minds are poisoned by all kinds of things; 
they are marvelously generous with regard to their no- 
tions of other people, but they can do nothing; every 
bit of their broadsightedness paralyzes their efforts. 

The knowledge of evil, instead of instigating 
to action and work and good, does the opposite; 
it paralyzes; whereas the very essence of the Gospel 
of God, working in conscience and conduct is that 
it shows itself at once in action. God can make 
simple, guileless people out of cunning, crafty people; 



Ourselves and Conscience. 211 

that is the marvel of the grace of God. It can take 
out the strands of evil and twistedness out of a per- 
son's mind and imagination and make him simple to- 
wards God, so that his life becomes radiantly beauti- 
ful by the miracle of His grace. 

(c) Conscience and Communion of the Saints. The 
" together' ' aspect. Nowhere is "enthusiasm for hu- 
manity" mentioned in the Bible. This is quite a mod- 
ern phrase. Enthusiasm for the "communion of 
saints" is continually mentioned in the Bible, and 
the argument is very simple and direct, that if we 
keep our consciences open towards God as He is re- 
vealed in Jesus Christ, we will find God bringing hun- 
dreds of other souls into oneness with Him through us. 

In 1 Corinthians 4:3,4, Paul shows three standards 
of judgment which he has left behind : 

(1.) Standard of the "special set" judgment — "It 
is a small matter that I am judged of you. ' ' 

(2.) Standard of the universal human judgment — 
"Or of man's judgment." 

(3.) Standard of conscience — "Yea, I judge not 
mine own self." 

And the standard he accepts as his final one is 
the Lord. 

One of the greatest disciplines in spiritual life is 
the darkness that does not come on account of sin, 
but that comes when God's Spirit leads you from walk- 
ing in the light of your conscience to walking in the 
light of the Lord. When the latter is learned, bitter- 
ness and contention are an impossibility. Defenders 
of the faith are always bitter till they have walked 
in the light of the Lord. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

SPIRIT: THE DOMAIN AND DOMINION 

OF SPIRIT. 

PROCESS OP THE TRINITY. 

N. B. "The entire province of life, both in its lowest forms 
or stages and in its highest, is the province of spirit." 
(1) An Instructive Parallel — God and Man. 1 Cor. 2: 9-11. 
(2> What the Bible says about Godhead. John 4: 24. 

THE ESSENTIAL NATUEE of God the Father, God the 
Son, and God the Holy Ghost. 

1. WILL. Ex. 3:14; John 10:17, 18; 16:8-11. 

2. LOVE. 1 John 4: 8; Eev. 1:5; Eom. 5: 5. 

3. LIGHT. 1 John 1:5; John 8:12: John 16:13. 

The Spirit is the first power we practically experi- 
ence anything of, but it is the last power we under- 
stand anything about. The whole working of the 
Spirit of God is much easier to experience than it is 
to try and understand. The chief reason of this 
is that we only form our ideas out of things we 
have seen and handled and touched, and when we 
come to talk about the Godhead and the Spirit, lan- 
guage is strained to its limit. We can only use pic- 
tures to try to convey the ideas that make us 
think; yet, in spite of this difficulty, it is very neces- 
sary that we should think, and learn to think as 
Christians; it is not sufficient to experience the reality 
of the Spirit of God within us, it is not sufficient to 

212 



Process of the Trinity. 213 

experience His wonderful work, but we must bring 
our brains into line, so that we can think and under- 
stand along Christian lines, and it is because so few 
Christians do think along Christian lines, that it is easy 
for w T rong teaching and wrong thinking to get in, es- 
pecially along the line of the Spirit. 

An Instructive Parallel. (1 Cor. 2:9-11.) "What 
Paul is referring to here is the basis of how to 
think. He is quite simple and clear and logical. 
The way you understand the things of a man, he says, 
, is by the spirit of man ; and the way you understand 
the things of God is by the Spirit of God, and the 
spirit of a man cannot understand the things of God, 
the Spirit of God alone can understand the things of 
God. That is the first principle he lays down, and 
we must see that it is clearly grasped and understood 
by us. The next step is very clear, viz.: that you 
cannot expound the things of God unless you have 
the Spirit of God, and you can only expound the things 
of God to others who have His Spirit. He says there 
is an analogy; there is a spirit in the natural world 
whereby you can compare and think and argue about 
natural things, but it is not the same law which runs 
through the spiritual world; as there is a law in 
the natural world, so there is a law in the spiritual 
world; and you will find Paul says that we cannot 
discern the spiritual law by our spirit, but only by the 
Spirit of God, and if we have not received the Spirit 
of God, we will never discern it, nor will we under- 
stand it; we will be continually moving in a dark 
world, and we will come slowly to a conclusion that 



214 Spirit: Domain and jDominion. 

the language of the New Testament is put very exag- 
geratedly and very wrongly; whereas immediately 
after receiving the Spirit of God, we learn to think 
along the line of the Bible ; we compare spiritual things 
with spiritual, and we do not speak of the things 
of God in the " words which man's wisdom teacheth," 
viz.: we cannot expound the things of God by the 
spirit of man, but only the Spirit of God. 

Verse 14. Again the point is quite clear in Paul's 
mind, he says that naturally our heart does not under- 
stand the things of God, and not only does it not 
understand, but when it hears them expounded, it says 
they are "foolishness." Take for instance the atti- 
tude of the "master in Israel" to Jesus Christ. He 
held strongly that the germ was there in him, and in 
all who were like him, and Jesus Christ brought this 
view (that Paul is expounding) to Nicodemus; He 
said, "Marvel not that I say unto you, You must be 
born from above; that which is born of the flesh is 
flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." 

So let us get that plain, fundamental distinction 
clearly in our minds; we cannot penetrate the things 
of God by intelligence, we cannot understand them; 
the only way we can penetrate and understand and 
practice and fairly grasp and think about the things 
of God, is by the Spirit of God. I would like to 
emphasize in this connection that Paul states emphat- 
ically that we must be agnostic mentally about God. 
Every Christian is unquestionably agnostic, mentally, 
for all we know about God we accept by revelation, 
we did not find it out ourselves, we did not worry it 



Process of the Trinity. 215 

out by thinking, we did not work it out by reason, 
we did not say, "Because so and so is true in the 
natural world, therefore it must be in the spiritual.' ' 
You cannot find out God that way, and we find 
practically what Jesus Christ meant when He said, 
"If you would know My doctrine, My logic and My 
reasoning and My thinking, do My will, first be- 
lieve in Me, commit yourself to Me, obey Me, receive 
the Spirit, then you will get to thinking along the 
way I reason.' ' 

Verse 15. Paul here is at the very fundamental 
heart of everything, as he nearly always is, because 
he is not only inspired by the Spirit of God in the 
way w^e all understand inspiration, but he is moved 
in a thoroughly special manner to expound the whole 
basis for Christian intelligence and Christian thinking. 

You will find the teaching abroad to-day that we 
have the Spirit of God in us, and all that is needed 
is to develop that germ; if you will put people in the 
right conditions, put them into the right understand- 
ing of things, that Spirit will develop and grow, and 
they will grasp and understand God. That is contrary 
to Jesus Christ's teaching, and quite contrary to the 
New Testament all through. There has to come 
a stage in your life and mine, when we are " paupers " 
in our own spirit; we have no power of our own, we 
cannot grasp God, we cannot begin to understand Him ; 
if we are going to understand Him, we must have the 
Holy Spirit, and He will begin to expound to us His 
mind; if we will put our machines, our bodily 
machines, into line with the Spirit which He gives, 



216 Spirit : Domain and Dominion. 

we will begin to understand. The way we under- 
stand the things of the world is by our natural intel- 
ligence, and the very same thing is true spiritually, 
viz.: the way we understand spiritual things is by 
our spiritual intelligence. 

What the Bible says about the Godhead. (John 
4:24.) Jesus Christ in saying "God is Spirit/ ' does 
not imply therefore I must worship Him sincerely. 
The term " Spirit' ' there has nothing whatever to 
do with human sincerity, it has to do with His Spirit 
in me; I must have the same Spirit in me, or I can- 
not worship Him. 

Now what is the Spirit? Instantly you find in- 
superable barriers to thought. Did you ever try for 
one minute to think of God? "Why, you cannot think 
of a Being who has had no beginning and has no end, 
consequently men without the Spirit of God make God 
out of ideas of their own. It is a great moment in your 
life and mine, when we do realize we are agnostics, 
when we realize we cannot get hold of God unless Jesus 
Christ is able to do for us what He said He was able 
to do, give us the Holy Spirit, and lift us into a new 
life whereby we will be able to understand what He 
reveals, and live the life He wants us to live. 

The first thing we have to deal with is the Trinity, 
the Godhead itself. We have called it the "Process of 
the Trinity," Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The first 
thing to notice is this, that what is true of the Father 
is true of the Son, and also of the Holy Ghost. There 
are three main characteristics in God the Father, there 
are three main characteristics in God the Son, and 



Process of the Trinity. 217 

three main characteristics in God the Holy Ghost, be- 
cause they are one. The three characteristics of God 
the Father are will, love, and light. Now we know 
nothing about God the Father saving as Jesus 
Christ has revealed Him. " Philip saith to Him, 
Show us the Father." "Have I been so long time 
with you, and yet hast thou not known Me, Philip? 
He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father.' * And 
the characteristics in the Lord Jesus Christ are- those 
three, will, love, and light. So in like manner take 
the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is the Godhead man- 
ifested now. He is not an ethereal influence, we do 
not see God the Father, we do not see God the Son 
nowadays, but God the Holy Ghost is here, and the 
three characteristics of God the Holy Ghost are, will, 
love, and light ; for these Three are one. 

Take the records of God the Father. He entered 
into His Sabbath rest, and men despised Him; God 
the Son entered into His Sabbath rest, and men de- 
spised Him; God the Holy Ghost has not yet entered 
into His Sabbath rest, and men are despising Him. The 
point to convey is this, that the essential nature of one 
is the essential nature of the others and if you under- 
stand the Spirit of God, you understand Jesus Christ, 
and you understand God the Father, consequently the 
first thing to do is to receive the Spirit of God. 

Now we will look at the essential nature of the 
Father. In order to show how difficult it is to get 
this in words, ask yourself this: "How much room 
does thinking take up?" No room at all, so it is 
with your spirit whereby you understand the things 



218 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

you come in contact with. Now, God is a Spirit, and 
if I am going to understand God, I must have the Spirit 
of God, and because my thinking and because God's 
Spirit take up no room they act very easily, work and 
inter-work with one another in my body, and what 
the Spirit of God does when He comes into me b^ 
the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ is to re-energize 
my spirit. My spirit in itself has no power to get 
hold of God; God's Spirit comes into my spirit and 
re-energizes that, then the rest depends on me; if I 
do not obey, if I do not bring into the light of the 
Spirit of God the dark and the wrong things in my 
soul, and get them dealt with by the light of the 
Spirit of God which He gives, then I shall grieve the 
Spirit of God, and grieve Him away. The first funda- 
mental characteristic of God the Father, or God Al- 
mighty, is given in Exodus 3 : 14. There is the de- 
scription of pure will as being the basis of God Al- 
mighty. Now there is no such thing as pure will in a 
man, God Almighty is the only Being who can have an 
act of pure will, and the Bible reveals that the essential 
nature of God is this tremendous power of will. By 
His will He created what His breath sustains. 

What is the main characteristic of Jesus Christ? 
(John 10:17, 18.) There again that is not a man's 
power, no man has the power to lay down his life in 
the way Jesus Christ is referring to. Jesus Christ, 
remember, is God incarnate, and the basal nature of 
God is the basal nature of Jesus Christ. "I lay down 
My life because I choose to, and I take it again be- 



Process of the Trinity*. 219 

cause I choose to; I am not here by any haphazard 
choice, I am here by the direct, determined will of God. " 

Then take the characteristic of God the Holy Ghost. 
(John 16:8-11.) There again the basal characteristic, 
of the Godhead is will, no man has that. 

Now with regard to the free will of man. Free 
will is a most limited subject ; human free will is nearly 
always understated, or overstated, no man has the 
power to make an act of pure free will. There is a 
pre-determination in a man's spirit that makes him 
will along certain lines. You will find when we come to 
deal with man that Jesus Christ teaches that when the 
Spirit of God comes into him, the Spirit of God brings 
His own generating will power, and consequently 
causes the man to will on lines with God Almighty, 
and you have this lamazing fact, that the saints' 
free choices are God the Father's pre-determinations. 

That is one of the most wonderful things in Chris- 
tian psychology, that a saint chooses exactly what 
God determines he should choose. It is beyond the 
limits of language. If you have not received the Spirit 
of God, that is one of the things the apostle Paul says 
sounds so foolish, but when you have received the 
Spirit, and if you will obey Him, you will find that 
the Spirit of God puts your spirit into complete har- 
mony with God's, and the sounds of your goings, and 
the sounds of God's goings are one and the same thing. 

We have dealt with the physical world, and you 
will find that everything is leading back to what the 
Bible reveals, viz.: that at the back of everything is 
spirit force, not matter ; not material things. What is 



220 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

that tremendous force? The Bible tells you, the 
force behind everything is this great Spirit of God. 
16 New Theology," " Christian Science," and "The- 
osophy." are all the same; they teach this, that God, 
in order to help Himself to realize Himself, created 
something called His Son. If you read their state- 
ments, you will find they say in effect, "The Son 
of God is not only Jesus Christ, the Son of God 
is the whole creation of man and God is •all, and 
the whole creation of men and women is helping 
God to realize Himself.' ' The practical outcome 
of this line of thinking seems logical, but logical con- 
clusions bring the mind to saying, "It is absurd to 
talk about 'sin'; sin is only a defect; and to talk about 
the need of an c atonement' by Jesus Christ is an old 
Orientalism, it is absurd to talk about there being 
a 'fall.'" The Bible never anywhere says that God 
created the world to help Him to realize Himself. The 
Bible reveals that God was absolutely self-sufficient, 
that the manifestation of Him as God the Son was 
for another purpose altogether, not for Himself at all, 
but for the solution of a gigantic problem, and the 
whole marvel of this new creation is that it is made 
of the earth earthy, and the great Spirit of God allows 
the enemy to be at work on this creation in a way he 
cannot work in any other creation. God overthrows 
the rule of His spiritual enemy by a being that is 
a little lower than the angels, viz.: man, and when 
God came into this order of things He did not come 
as an angel, He came as a man, and took on Himself 
human nature, that is the marvel of the incarnation, 



Process of the Trinity. 221 

and the characteristics of the great God are mirrored 
in the Lord Jesus Christ, and if we want to know what 
God is like, study Jesus Christ. Let us thank God 
that the basis of the mighty nature of God is will, 
consequently when His Spirit comes into my spirit, 
I can will to do w r hat God wants me to do. Will sim- 
ply means the whole nature active ; will is not a fac- 
ulty. We talk about people having a "weak will" or 
a "strong will"; that is a misleading idea. Will sim- 
ply means the whole nature active, and by the ener- 
gizing of the Spirit of God, we <are energized, and are 
able to do what we never could do before; that is, 
we are able to obey God, if we will. 

Then take the next great characteristic — love. (1 
John 4: 8.) "God is love." The Bible does not say God 
is loving, the Bible says "'God is love." The phrase 
"lovingkindness" is used' often in the Bible, but 
when the true nature of God is revealed, it does not 
say God is a loving being, it says, "God is love." 
The whole great basis of God is active will, and that 
will is love. Jesus Christ's characteristic is seen in 
Revelation 1:5; there the basal characteristic of Jesus 
Christ is love, and instantly the kind of love is shown ; 
not lovingkindness in overlooking sin, but the essential 
nature of love that delivers us from sin. "Who loved 
us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." 

Now take the essential characteristic of God the 
Holy Ghost. (Rom. 5:5.) There again the essen- 
tial characteristic of the active power of God's will 
is "love." When the Spirit of God, is received 
by me, the meaning in Romans 5 : 5 is not that He 



222 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

enables me to have a capacity for loving God but 
tbat He sheds abroad in my heart the love of God, 
a very much more fundamental and marvelous thing; 
not that He gives me the ability to work out a 
love for God, but He sheds abroad in me the essential 
nature of God. Paul tries to put that in Galatians 2 : 
20, a verse which is perfectly familiar to us all, but 
none of us will ever fathom it no matter how long 
we live, nor how much we experience. He is stat- 
ing this receiving of the very nature of Jesus Christ. 
Again Paul says, "When it pleased God who sep- 
arated me from my mother's womb, to reveal His 
Son in me." That is the true idea, of a saint, a 
saint is not <a human being who is trying to be good, 
a saint is not a human being who is trying by effort 
and prayer and longing and obedience to get as many 
of the saintly characteristics as possible, a saint is 
a being who is recreated, "If any man be in Christ 
Jesus, he is a new creation, " and we have to be 
solemnly careful we do not travesty the work of God, 
or the atonement of the Lord Jesus. If we belittle 
it in the tiniest degree, although we may do it in ignor- 
ance, we will surely suffer, and the first thing that 
will make us belittle it, is when we get out of sympathy! 
with God, and into sympathy with human beings ; when 
we begin to drag down the tremendous truths of God's 
revelation that the essential nature of God's Spirit 
is will, and love, and light. It is those characteristics 
that are imparted to us by the Holy Ghost; we have 
not them naturally, because, by nature, our hearts are 
darkened away from God, and we have not the power 1 



Process of the Trinity. 223 

to generate will within ourselves, we have not the 
power to make an act of pure will, we have no power 
to love God when we like; and the number of people 
who are piously trying to make their poor human 
heart love God, is pathetic, 

Then take the last characteristic, the essential na- 
ture of God the Father is light. (1 John 1:5.) That 
is an amazing declaration, there is no variableness 
caused by His turning. There is no shadow of a turn. 
"We are told that wherever there is light and substance, 
there must be a shadow, but there is no shadow in 
God, none whatever. What is the characteristic of 
Jesus Christ? Take it on His own terms, "I am the 
Light of the world"; no shadow; in Jesus Christ. 
(John 8:12.) 

Then take the Holy Spirit. Active will, pervading 
love showing itself as light in God the Father; active 
will, pervading love showing itself as light in the 
Lord Jesus Christ; all-pervading energy and will and 
all-pervading love showing itself as light in the Holy 
Ghost. (John 16:13.) There is the active working 
again of these fundamental characteristics of the God- 
head in God the Holy Ghost. They were the funda- 
mental characteristics of Jesus Christ, and they were 
the fundamental characteristics of God Almighty as 
God the Father. 

Let us revise again. "God is love." No man 
ever believes that who is wide-awake naturally, 
tmless he has received the Spirit of God. Why, 
the thing, as Paul says, "is foolishness," it is ab- 
surd. Watch the basal characteristic of the Ser- 



224 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

mon on the Mount. Jesus 'Christ says, in effect, 
that the basis in everyone of His disciples, after 
they have been initiated into the life He is living, 
will be to find that God is their Father and is love. 
Then you get the wonderful working out in your life ; 
not "I won't worry," but you will come to the place 
where you "cannot worry," for you have the 
Spirit of God shedding abroad in your heart the love 
of God, and you will find you can never think of any- 
thing that God your Father will forget. That is why 
our Lord talked so much about the great difference in 
the people who are where He wants them to be, and 
although great clouds and perplexities may come, as 
in Job 's case, and as in the case of Paul, and as in the 
case of every saint, they never touch the secret place 
of the Most High in your life. "Therefore will we not 
fear though the earth be removed and though the 
mountains be cast into the midst of the sea." Why? 
The Spirit of God has got us so rightly centered that 
everything now is rightly adjusted. 

You cannot give yourself the Spirit of God, that is God 
Almighty's gift if you will simply become poor enough 
to ask Him (Luke 11:13), but once He is in, there 
is something you can do, and God cannot do, I mean you 
can obey Him. If you don't obey Him, you will grieve 
Him and He will go. Over and over again we need to 
be reminded of Paul's counsel, "Work out your own 
salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that 
worketh in you to will and to do of His good pleasure." 
Thank God it is gloriously and majestically true that 
the Holy Spirit can work in me the very nature of Jesus 



Process of the Trinity. 225 

Christ, if I will obey Him, until in and through my 
mortal flesh may be manifested works that will make 
men glorify My Father which is in Heaven, and men 
will take knowledge of us that we have been with 
Jesus. 

Light is the most marvelous description of clear, 
beautiful moral character from God's standpoint. 1 
John 1:7: "Walk in the light with nothing to hide." 
What light?— God. What light?— Jesus Christ. What 
light? — the Holy Spirit. "This is the condemnation/ ' 
says Jesus, "that light is come into the world and 
men love darkness rather than light, because their 
deeds are evil." What is my darkness? My own 
point of view, my own prejudices, preconceived de- 
terminations; if the Spirit of God agrees with that, 
all well and good; if He does not, I shall go my 
own way. That is darkness, and that is the very 
moment of determination. The weaning that goes 
on when a soul is being taken out of its own con- 
victions into the light of Christ, is a time of perils 
in a soul life. When a child is being weaned, 
it is fractious, and when God is trying to wean 
us from our own ways of looking at things to get us 
into the full light of the Holy Spirit, we are very frac- 
tious too. We call it conviction of sin, and if I per- 
sist in keeping to my own light, I will end in darkness, 
said Jesus, but if I will keep walking in the light, 
recognizing and relying on the absolute authority of 
God the Holy Spirit to expound to me the Bible, to 
bring me into a complete understanding of His way, 
then I shall have fellowship with others. 



226 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

But then comes the wonderful thing, I will have a 
purity of life that is pure in God's sight; that means 
too pure for me to begin to understand. Anything 
less — I say it measuring every word — anything less 
would be blasphemous. If 1 John 1 : 7 is not true, if 
God cannot cleanse me from all sin, if God cannot make 
me unblameable in holiness in His sight, then Jesus 
Christ has totally misled us, and His great, mighty 
work of atonement is not what it pretends to be. Oh, 
if we would only get into the way of facing God with 
our limitations, and tell Him He cannot do it, we would 
begin to see the awful wickedness of unbelief, and why 
Jesus Christ was so vigorous against unbelief, and 
why, in the Book of Eevelation, unbelief is placed at' 
the very head of all the awful sins ! When the Holy 
Spirit comes in, that unbelief is turned out, and by 
obedience, the will, the energy of God is put into us, 
and He can make us will to do His good pleasure, and 
He can shed abroad in our hearts the love of God. 
Then I will be able to show the same love to my fellow- 
men that God showed to me, and He will make me 
light. My morality, my religious conduct and my 
spirituality will exceed the righteousness, the morality 
and the spirituality of all the naturally pious peo- 
ple, because the supernatural, by God's Spirit, has been 
made natural in the life I now live. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

SPIRIT: THE DOMAIN AND DOMINION 

OF SPIRIT. 

MUNDANE UNIVERSE. 

SPIRIT AS PHYSICAL FORCE. 

1. WORLD OF MATTER. Ps. 104:30; 33:6; 2 Pet. 

3:5. 

2. WORLD OF NATURE. Gen. 1: 2; Job 26: 13. 

3. WORLD OF SELF. John 6:63; Jas. 2:26; Ezek. 1: 

20; Rev. 11: 11. 

(1) We deal here with the meaning of some big modern words 

such as transcendence, immanence, etc. 

(2) The student will find that we claim the Bible gives the 

working explanation there is of all things. 

I 
We found in our last chapter that the three funda- 
mental characteristics of God were will, love, and light. 
That God was the only Spirit who could will pure 
will, no man can have an act of pure will, and that 
when we participate in God's Spirit, we have our 
spirit energized, and we are able to do the will of 
God. "We found that what was true of God the Father 
was true of God the Son and true of God the Holy- 
Ghost. The present day is the dispensation of the 
Holy Spirit. That is a phrase we are perfectly famil- 
iar with, but do we understand sufficiently who the 
Holy Ghost is? He is identical with God the Father 
and God the Son; and being a person He must exer- 

227 



228 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

cise an influence, and the more pronounced the per- 
son, the more powerful His influence. What we have 
to recognize is, that the majority of people do not 
know Him as a person, they only know Him as an 
influence, and that is why the Holy Spirit is most 
popularly spoken of as an influence. 

Now consider the Mundane Universe, i. e., this ter- 
restrial world we exist in, the earthly world we live 
in, the rocks and trees and people we come in contact 
with. We have divided this theme into three parts, 
(a) the World of Matter, (b) the World of Nature, and 
(c) the World of Self. A great alteration has come 
over what is called "material" science to-day, and it 
is coming back to the Bible point of view — that at the 
back of everything is spirit; the material world holds 
itself in existence by spirit. Away in the earlier days, 
when the Greeks tried to explain the material world, 
they said it was made of "atoms," and then down the 
ages they got to the place where they found they could 
split up the atoms-, then they called those split-up ele- 
ments "molecules," then they found they could split 
up the molecules, and the split-up molecules are made 
of "electrons," and they have discovered that the 
electron is like a solar system and behind it all is 
"force." 

That miay be of interest or it may not, but the 
fact is very significant because it points out the 
absurd cry that the Bible and modern science do not 
agree, how could they? If the Bible agreed with mod- 
ern science, in about fifty years both would be out of 
date. Every science, at one time, has been modern. 



Mundane Universe. 229 

Science simply means man's attempt to explain what 
he knows. Another important aside is this, do not 
belittle the Bible and say that the Bible has only to 
do with man's salvation. The Bible has not only to 
do with man's salvation, the Bible is a universe of 
revelation facts that explain the world we live in, 
and it is simply giving a "sop to Satan" to say, what 
a great many modern preachers are saying, that the 
Bible does not pretend to tell us how the world came 
into existence. The Bible does, the Bible claims to be 
the only expositor of how the world came about, and 
the only expositor of how the world keeps going, and 
the only book that tells us how we understand the 
world. Look at the world of matter. (Ps. 104:30, 
etc. ; Ps. 33 : 6 ; 2 Pet. 3 : 5.) Those three passages sim- 
ply express what the Bible revelation expresses all 
through, that God created the world out of nothing. 
The Bible does not say God "emanated" the world. 
That is a very clever modern idea ; they say that God 
evolved the world out of Himself. The Bible says that 
God "created" the world by the breath of His mouth. 
Meditate for one moment on that word "creation" 
and see what a supernatural word it is. No phi- 
losopher ever thought of it, no expounder of nat- 
ural history ever imagined such a word. "We can 
use the words "evolution" and "emanation," but 
we simply do not know; what "creation" is. There 
is only one Being who does know, and that is God 
Himself, and the Bible says that God created the world 
by the word of His mouth. Now there are some people 
in this twentieth century who take hold of that state- 



230 Spirit: Domain and Dominion, 



ment and make it mean that all the rocks and trees 
and people in the world are simply manifestations of 
God. The Bible does not say so, the Bible says that 
God created the world. 

What is the world of matter? For instance, I am 
looking at this book, I see it is bound in red covers, 
it is flexible, it is fairly hard, and there are black 
marks on it. Well, I can account for the " redness' ' 
and for the ' 'blackness' ' and the "flexibility" by mj* 
senses, but one thing I cannot describe, what the 
thing is that awakens these sensations ! That is mat- 
ter, something we do not know. The way we see 
things depends on our nerves, but the thing in itself 
that miakes us see it that way, what is that ? I see that 
clock and will probably describe it in the same way as 
you will — it is hard and smooth and brown and white 
and I can hear a sound and see a face, and so on, 
everyone of these things can be described as the re- 
sults of my sensations, but what is the "thing in it- 
self" that makes me have those sensations? The way 
we see the things depends on ourselves, but what the 
thing is in itself, we do not know, that is we do not 
know what matter is. The Bible says it is created by 
God, the way we interpret it depends on what spirit 
we have. 

(b) The World of Nature. That means the order 
that material things appear in to me. The way 
I explain things is by thinking, the way I be- 
gin to explain the world outside is by thinking, 
then if I can explain it by mind, there must 



Mundane Universe. 231 

have been a mind that made it. That is log- 
ical, simple and clear, therefore atheism is exactly 
what the Bible calls it, the belief of a fool, because 
an atheist says, I can explain to a certain extent what 
things are like outside by my mind, but there never 
was a mind that created it. Now we have to come 
to this problem, How is it that we all see and coma 
tc different conclusions about the world? How is it 
that a man can be an " atheist,' ' how is it that he 
can be an " agnostic,' ' how is that he can see every- 
thing "as bad as bad ca$ be"? How is it that an- 
other man sees another thing "as good as good can 
be"? It all depends on the spirit inside him. That is 
why the world of nature seems such a contradiction. 

(Gen. 1:2.) There is the reconstruction of the 
order of things out of chaos. In the beginning God 
created things out of nothing, matter did not exist 
before God created it. It is God who created it 
entirely out of nothing, not out of Himself. The Bible 
does not say that God created, the world out of Him- 
self, it says He created it by His breath. But Gen- 
esis 1:2 is the reconstruction out of chaos. As we 
pointed out when we dealt with "Man," there was 
probably a former order of things that was ruined by 
disobedience, and produced the chaos that God re- 
constructed the order of things out of, which we know 
and which we so differently interpret. 

(Job 26 : 13.) There the Bible says that God made 
the established order of things. We hear people say 
that if God created the established order, He is respon- 
sible for sin being here. Why the Bible says He is, 



232 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

and what is the proof that He is responsible? Cal- 
vary ! In Colossians 1 : 16 there is an allusion to 
what God created and for what God necessarily made 
Himself responsible. God created everything that was 
created, He created the being who became Satan, He 
created man who became sinner, and God holds Him- 
self responsible for Satan and sin. 

Take the next step, God did not create sin, 
sin is the outcome of wrong relationships between 
two of God's creations. Sin is a relation set up be- 
tween the being revealed as Satan, and the being re- 
vealed as Adam, it is not a creation at all. Yet God 
holds Himself responsible for it from the very begin- 
ning, He holds Himself responsible for the possibility 
of sin, and the Lord Jesus Christ's life and death and 
resurrection are proof that He took the responsibility, 
and God nowhere holds man responsible for having 
a wrong disposition in him ; you won't find one passage 
in the Bible where God holds a man responsible for 
having the heredity of sin in him, but He holds him 
responsible the moment he sees and understands that 
God can deliver him from that heredity. (John 3 : 19.) 

God is responsible for the established order of 
nature. Now there are various conflicting views about 
the world. If you will read carefully tire Book of 
Job, you will find that the world of nature is a wild 
contradiction from beginning to end; you cannot ex- 
plain it in any satisfactory way at all. Immediately 
you start out to say that God is good, you will come 
across some facts that prove He is not. "When a man 
starts and says there is no God at all, he can prove 



Mundane Universe. 233 

his position. You may have as many accounts of the 
order of nature outside you, as you have human beings. 
The spirit inside the man makes him interpret what 
he sees outside, and if I do not have the Spirit of 
God in me, I will never interpret the world outside 
as God interprets it; I will have continually to shut 
my eyes, and to deny certain facts: I will have to do 
what our "Christian Science" friends do, deny that 
facts are facts. 

Now we see the limitations of trying to dispute 
with a man who is an atheist. He can prove his 
position, you cannot disprove it to him, but immedi- 
ately you get him to receive the Spirit, you will alter 
his logic. Paul says, ' ' The spirit of a man understands 
the things of a man, but does not understand the 
things of God." If God created nature and I have 
not the Spirit of God, I will never interpret the 
order of nature as God does; I will prove the Bible 
is simply a "cunningly devised old wives' fable"; 
prove the whole thing is a piece of idiotic Oriental 
tradition. If I am to understand the Bible, I must 
have the Spirit of God. 

This is for thinking; we all know about the Spirit 
of God for practical living, but do we realize the need 
to have the Spirit of God to think with? So many 
Christian people use dangerous weapons against the 
enemies of Christianity, which one and all are really 
against Jesus Christ Himself, simply because they 
have not been renewed in "the spirit of their minds"; 
because they will not think on God's line ; because they 
refuse to make their minds work. We have no busi- 



234 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

ness to be fools; we have no business to be stupid; 
we have no business to be ignorant about how God 
created the world, and no business to be ignorant as 
to how we can explain to ourselves the way that dis- 
cerns the arm of the Lord all through. When 
I receive the Spirit of God for my practical living, 
He begins to stir my brain after He has transformed 
my practical life. Will we bring this machine, the 
brain, into harmony with the new line of thinking? 
Take an illustration in the 15th of John. Jesus laid 
down a remarkable principle for practical living and for 
practical thinking — "I am the true Vine!" Is the nat- 
ural vine a false one ? No, the natural vine is a shadow 
of the real one. "I am the Bread." Is the ordinary 
bread we eat false? No, the ordinary bread we eat 
is the shadow of the real bread. "I am the Door," 
and so on. Jesus Christ taught His disciples how to 
think by "correspondences." 

If you have the Spirit of God in you, you will 
be able to interpret what you see with your eyes, and 
hear with your ears, and understand with your brain, 
in the light of God. "The sun shall no more be thy 
light by day iror the moon by night, but the Lord 
Himself shall be thy everlasting light. ' ' Did you ever 
ask what that meant spiritually? May it not mean 
that ordinary days and nights bring facts into your 
life you cannot explain, but when you receive the 
Spirit of God you get on the line of explaining 
them? For instance, we cannot explain life, yet it is 
a very common-place fact that we are alive; we can- 
not explain love, we cannot explain death, we cannot 



Mundane Universe. 235 

explain sin, yet they are all blunt, common-sense facts. 
When we try to explain them in our own light, we 
cannot make anything of them; the world, the order 
of nature is a confusion; there is nothing clear about 
it; a confusing, wild chaos. Immediately yoa receive 
the Spirit of God, He energizes your spirit for practical 
living, and gets your brain slowly into practical think- 
ing line, and you will begin to see God's order in 
all that chaos, to "discern the arm of the Lord," 
the Lord will explain to you the facts of com- 
mon days and common nights. That is the mean- 
ing of our Lord Jesus Christ saying, "The kingdom 
of God is within you." If I want to understand the 
world, the order of nature, as the Bible reveals it, 
let me have the Spirit of God. (Luke 11 : 13.) 

(Matt. 11:25.) "I thank Thee, Father, that Thou 
hast revealed these things to babes." Then He thanked 
God fhat He was the only medium the Father had for 
revealing Himself, and the only way we get to under- 
stand God, and God's universe, is by the Spirit of God, 
and the message is given in the same passage, "Come 
unto Me." That is a message to His disciples, not to 
sinners on the outside. 

Watch the outlook of your mind when you have 
been "born again" of the Spirit of God, and you will 
understand the condition of mind Jesus Christ is 
alluding to, "laboring and heavy laden," trying to 
think out what won't be thought out, and Jesus 
Christ's message is, "Come to Me and I will give you 
rest." "I am the Way." "Get the Spirit that is 
in Me, imparted to you from God by Me, and. you 



236 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

will begin to see things as I do. If you don't, you 
will never know God, and you will never see things 
as I do. Marvel not that I say unto you, You must 
be born again/ 9 "Born again' ' for practical thinking 
as well as practical seeing. 

It is a strange thing in our schools and every- 
where else, the indiscriminate way we are taught 
to think like pagans, and to live like Christians. 
All the thinking explanations taught in every univer- 
sity are pagan, every one of them, anci we train our 
men who teach us to think like pagans, and to live 
like Christians, and the consequence is what we see. 
What we have to do is to get our thinking into line 
with the living Spirit of God, to begin to take 
the laborious trouble to think, "to meditate on these 
things" and get ourselves continually harnessed in 
imagination to Jesus Christ. "Bringing every thought 
and every imagination into captivity to the Lord Je- 
sus." Never allow your mind to run in wild specu- 
lation, that is where danger begins, that is the way 
the "sin of Eve" begins, when the Christian allows 
the mind to run off on speculative tangents, "I want 
to find out this and that." "Come unto Me," says 
Jesus, "I am the Way," the only way to live, not only 
the way to get saved and sanctified, but the way to 
think, and no man knows God, says Jesus, but the 
one "to whom I will reveal Him," and I will reveal 
Him to anyone who will come to Me. 

Then take (c) the World of Self. (John 6:63.) 
Can Jesus Christ speak to me to-day? He can by 
the Holy Spirit, but if I take His words without His 



Mundance Universe. 237 

Spirit they are of no avail to me. I can conjure with, 
them, and do all kinds of things, but they are not 
life. Immediately the Spirit of God is in me, He brings 
to my remembrance what Jesus said, and makes it 
live, and it is the Spirit of God in me making alive 
the words of Jesus outside me, that enables me to 
assimilate them. God exercises a remarkable power in 
taking texts out of the Bible context 'and putting 
them into the context of our life. You will often 
find a verse come to you right out of the Bible 
setting, and begin a new setting in your life; it 
has become alive and has become a precious, secret 
possession to you. See that you keep it a secret 
possession and do not "east your pearls before 
swine' ' — the strong words of the Lord Jesus Christ. 

If one may use an ingenious symbol, it would 
be that Jesus Christ was crucified in the place of a 
1 ' skull, ' ' and that is where He is always crucified, that 
is where He is always put to shame to-day, viz.: 
in the heads of men who won't bring their think- 
ing into line with the Spirit of God. If they are in- 
spired by the Holy Spirit, they always build their 
words on the words of Jesus Christ or of God. That 
is the way we are renewed in the Spirit of our mind, 
not by an impulse of the Spirit, not by an impression, 
but by being gripped by the word of God. The 
old habit of getting "a word from God" is the 
right one, and don't give up till you get one, 
never go on an impression, it will go, there is 
nothing in it, nothing lasting unless the word be- 
comes living and brings back to remembrance some 



238 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

word of His. That is how the world of self is 
made just as Jesus Christ wants it to be, that is 
the way we are able to discern the arm of the Lord; 
if we do not, supposing myself is ruled by another 
spirit away from Jesus, then I will explain the world 
according to that spirit, the spirit that rules myself. 
If it is I, my right to myself, I will never explain 
anything like Jesus Christ does, I will begin to patron- 
ize Him. If I da not dare to patronize Jesus, I will 
patronize the apostle Paul, and if I don't patronize 
Paul, I will begin to sneer at the Pentateuch. Any- 
thing to appear up to date, because the spirit that 
is in man, no matter how cultured, no matter how 
moral, no matter how religious, if it is not the Spirit 
of God, must be "scattering" away from Jesus Christ; 
no matter how sweet and delightful, how favorable 
it may appear to men, "he that gathereth not with. 
Me scattereth. " " I am the Way ; ' ' not only the Spirit 
of God for living, but the Spirit of God for thinking. 

(Ezek. 1:20.) The picture there is that the 
ultimate working of everything in harmony with 
God is by the Spirit of God. The cherubim are 
a true picture of the "mystical body of Christ." 
You remember that Moses was told to make the 
cherubim, he was also told previously that he 
must make no image of anything in Heaven above, 
or on earth beneath, and the cherubim are figures of 
nothing like anything in Heaven or earth. Why? Be- 
cause they are like something that is being made 
now. the mystical body of Christ. You find it figured 
in the garden of Eden, the only way back to the tree 



Mundane Universe. 239 

of life is by the mystical body; salvation and sancti- 
fication mean not only possessed by the Spirit for 
living, but possessed by the Spirit for thinking. Cher- 
ubim were guardians into the holiest of all, and when 
the mystical body of Christ is complete, all the ma- 
chinery of this earth will be moved and directed by 
the Spirit of God. 

There is a great difference between interpre- 
tation by intuition and interpretation by think- 
ing. One is never safe, the other always is. If 
you bring your mind into captivity to the Holy 
Spirit, and be renewed in it, you will get to 
what is termed the "Nous." The "Nous" simply 
means the responsible intelligence; up to that point 
in your natural life, and that point in your spiritual 
life, you get things by intuition, impulse, but there 
is no responsibility. See to it whenever you get to 
the point of responsible intelligence, then realize that 
you have come to a sure line of thinking. That is 
what the writer to the Hebrews refers to in Hebrews 5 : 
"By this time you ought to be teachers," but you want 
spooned meat again; by this time they ought to be 
robust and mature, no longer either children or fools, 
but men and women able to discern between right and 
wrong, good and bad, with responsible, thoroughly in- 
formed intelligences. How many of us have allowed 
God to bring us there spiritually? How many of us 
can think along Jesus Christ's line? How many of 
us have to say whenever any such subject is taught. 
"I leave those things for other people"? "We have 
no business to, we have all to be our best for God. 



240 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

We have not only to be good lovers, but good think- 
ers, and it is along that line we can test the spirits. 

How are we going to test the teaching that is abroad 
to-day? Immediately you get a real Christian exper- 
ience in a man or woman and the head not in- 
formed, not disciplined, the intelligence becomes a 
hotbed for heresy. If we would revolutionize our 
thinking and bring our imaginations back again 
to the context, back to God's heart, the Bible, 
which not only explains God, but explains the 
world we live in; not only explains the things that 
are right, but the things that are wrong! 

If I start out with an idea and say, "Everything 
is going well, and is bright and happy," then there 
is a sudden earthquake, someone is killed by light- 
ning, tremendous floods, a volcano, or a shocking mur- 
der, or worse crime; every conclusion you like to 
come to will be flatly contradicted by the world out- 
side, by the facts you see. The Bible and the world out- 
side agree, they are an absolute puzzle until you re- 
ceive the Spirit of God. When you receive the Spirit 
of God, you are taken first of all into a new realm, 
a totally new kingdom, then, if you will bring your 
mind into harmony, and every thought into captiv- 
ity, and begin slowly to discipline and educate your 
character, you begin to discern not only order in the 
Bible, but your eyes are opened and the secrets a,re un- 
derstood and grasped. We read history and begin to 
find out the way God has been working; we look at 
our own lives and find not a lot of haphazard chances, 
but that we are working out some preconceived idea 



Mundane Universe. 241 

of God we do not know; we begin to find, to our 
amazement, that our lives are answers to the prayers 
of the Holy Ghost, and back of everything is the tre- 
mendous, wonderful mind of God, until a human 
being can go to the length of saying what the apostle 
Paul said, "We have the mind of Christ.' ' That is a 
good deal more than the Spirit of Christ. Kemember, 
the mind of Christ means thinking like Christ; Jesus 
never thought from any other centre but God. "The 
words that I speak to you they are spirit and life." 
Where did He get them from? He got them from the 
Spirit that was in Him, He never spoke from the other 
spirit, from His right to Himself, that is why the 
tongue in Christ got to the right place, and that is 
how the tongue and the brain in you and me will 
get to the right place, when once we learn to obey 
the Spirit of God for thinking. Thank God there is 
a line of explanation for everything under Heaven! 
Jesus Christ does satisfy the last aching abyss of the 
heart by our reception of the Spirit, and obedience 
to Him. We do feel that one word ringing all over our 
life mentally, " Obey ! Obey ! ' ' Those of you who know 
it in the moral realm, put it into the intellectual. Obey ! 
Is the imagination in captivity to Jesus ? Is the think- 
ing along His line, being renewed in the spirit of my 
mind? Is this in absolute harmony with the Lord Je- 
sus Christ? 

The day we live in, mentally, is a day^ of wild 
imaginations everywhere, unchecked imaginations in 
music, in literature, and, worst of all, in Scripture. 
People going off on the wildest speculations, getting 



242 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

hold of one line and then running clean off on a tan- 
gent, explaining everything on that line; that is not 
according to the Spirit of God. There is no royal 
road, none of us get there all at once, it is by steady 
discipline, when I am willing that God should bring 
my brain into harmony with the Spirit He has put in 
my heart. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SPIRIT: THE DOMAIN AND DOMINION 

OF SPIRIT. 

MAN'S UNIVERSE. 

(Job 12: 10; Psa. 51: 10.) 

N. B. We deal here particularly with Spirit in the f< Natural" 
Man. 

1 SPIEIT AS SOUL-MAKING POWEE. 

(a) Particular Form. Gen. 2:7; 6: 17. 

(b) Personal Form. Num. 16: 22; 27: 16; Zech. 12: 1; 
Isa. 19: 3; Psa. 51: 10. 

(c) Physical Form. Job 32: 8, 9; Gen. 7: 22; Hab. 2: 19; 
Eev. 13: 15; Job 34: 14, 15. 

2 SPIEIT IN THE FLESH. 

(a) Independent. 1 Cor. 2: 11, 14. 

(b) Dependent. Psa. 32:2; 2 Cor. 7:1; Jas. 3:15. 

(c) Death. Eom. 7:18, 23; 8:5-7; 1 Pet. 3:19. 

We will deal first of all with "Nous." The best 
way to put it practically is — the moment of re- 
sponsible intelligence, either in a natural man or 
a spiritual man. (That is not a definition in any 
other way than being a working indication of the 
thing for practical purposes.) Now the point when 
responsible intelligence begins in a natural life is very 
different, some people never seem to reach it at all, 
they live like children and die like children, or rather 
more like "simpletons" than children. They have 

243 



244 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

impulses and imaginations and fancies, but never seem 
to come to a responsible intelligence. A child has no 
responsible intelligence to begin with. In the spirit- 
ual domain, the same thing is true. In the beginning 
of the spiritual life we have the "Spirit of God/' but 
not the "mind of Christ. M The "mind of Christ" 
means that we have formed the same intelligent, 
responsible outlook on things that the Son of God 
had, and one of the greatest benedictions of God's 
grace is this, that some people who do not seem tcf 
have any natural "nous" can construct one in the 
realm of grace by the Spirit of God, and the right 
use of it in the temple of the Holy Ghost. It is not 
something with which we can say we are endowed; 
to begin with, we have the capacity, but the forma- 
tion of the "nous" depends on how we develop, and 
allow ourselves to be disciplined. 

Spiritually, God always holds us responsible for 
being deficient in the matter of this understanding 
of things in a responsible way. 

Let us look at the subject of "Nous" under three 
headings, the Natural Nous, the Spiritual Nous, and 
the Bewildered Nous. Jesus Christ is the respon- 
sible expression of the intelligence of God, Jesus 
Christ is called the "Logos/' We have the same 
thing in man, we have spirit, and immediately 
we form a responsible intelligence, our words are 
responsible, all the things we express, the state- 
ments we make, and the thoughts we form are 
all stamped with responsibility. A child's sphere is 
not responsible, but with persons of a mature intel- 



Man's Universe. 245 

ligence, their statements are responsible; consequently 
God judges us by our words. It is quite true 
there are times in a man's life when he has to 
say "answer my meaning, not my words," but 
that is an exceptional thing. We have to remember 
that the words, the expressions in us, when we have 
a responsible intelligence, are responsible ones. 

Take, first of all, the natural responsible intelli- 
gence. There is a capacity in man apart from the 
Spirit of God, to know that there is a God. (Rom. 1 : 
20.) I interpret the things outside me by my intelli- 
gence. I must come to the conclusion that there was 
an intelligence that made them, not less than my in- 
telligence, therefore every man when he becomes 
responsibly intelligent, does know that there must be 
responsible intelligence behind everything there is. 
So you find that God holds every man responsible, and 
the writer to the Hebrews says, "A man must believe 
that God is, before he can come to Him." "We are 
talking apart from the work of grace, we are talking 
entirely novr in the natural way. 

(Rom. 7:23-25.) Paul is revealing that in the na- 
tural make-up of a man the ordinance of God is placed, 
and when the man becomes responsibly intelligent he 
is able to discern a great many things, things he calls 
justice and right, and Paul states that heathen are 
judged by conscience. We are coming very near to 
the point where conscience becomes a responsible work- 
ing power in a man's life. When we dealt with con- 
science we called it the eye of the soul looking out 
towards God. Well, this is very nearly the same 



246 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

thing. The nous, the responsible intelligence, begins 
to discern in the natural spirit the ordinance of God 
written, consequently the idea of people saying men 
are not responsible for doing wrong is not true to 
nature or to revelation. The Bible says that the man 
knows by the way he is made that certain things are 
wrong, and as he obeys that ordinance of God written 
in his spirit he will be judged. 

(Heb. 11:3.) There again we have the bridge be- 
tween the natural and the spiritual. This is not a 
question of swallowing a revelation of God, this is 
a question of understanding with a responsible intelli- 
gence how the world was made, and it is simply a 
new emphasis on the thing we have been emphasizing 
all along, the responsibility of those of us who are 
Christians in experience for being responsible Chris- 
tians in intelligence. "We have no business to be ig- 
norant of how the world was made. If we can form 
responsible intelligence as natural men, we have to 
form it also as spiritual men. The Bible does not 
only teach the way of salvation, but the way of spirit- 
ual sanity. The Bible world corresponds exactly with 
the natural world, and the Bible world explains the 
natural world, and it is the only one that does, and 
we are held responsible by God for not allowing our- 
selves to form that spiritual "nous," to understand 
that the worlds were made by the word of God out 
of nothing that does appear. That is a different thing 
from Romans 2 : 20, which is simply that a man, by 
his natural intelligence, when he becomes responsible 



Man's Universe. 247 

knows that there must be a mind behind the things 
that are. 

Now let us take the spiritual nous. (1 Cor. 2: 16.) 
That is a wonderful passage, it is much more than the' 
Spirit of Christ, it is the responsible understanding of 
Christ, "We have the mind of Christ.' ' You will find 
every now and again that the Spirit of God within 
us, when we are born again, is struggling to get ua 
to understand as God understands, and we are very 
stupid, very dark and very silly in the way we miff- 
take a great many things the Spirit of God is try- 
ing to lead us to, but in entire sanctification, when 
the Son of God is formed in us, we understand with 
this responsible intelligence, we understand just like 
Jesus Christ did, and the consequence is this, that I 
am held responsible for doing through my body the 
things that I understand God wants me to do. Jesus 
Christ spoke the things that He knew His Father 
wanted Him to speak, and He spake nothing else; 
I must do the same if I have the mind of Christ. Je- 
sus worked with His hands only those works that He 
knew were the exact expression of His Father. I must 
do the same. Spiritual nous, then, does not only mean 
the Holy Spirit energizing my spirit; it means my al- 
lowing that Spirit to work out in a responsible intelli- 
gence in me. 

(1 John 5:20.) That word "understanding' ' does 
not mean " necromancy,' ' it does not mean a great 
big flashing "spiritual intuition," it means that we 
understand with a perfectly responsible intelligence 
that which comes from God; and God holds us re- 



248 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

sponsible for not knowing it. It is not the question of 
an uncanny spiritual influence, it is not the question 
of getting some tremendously wonderful insight from 
God, it is the question of having the understanding, 
the nous, so absolutely obedient to the Spirit of God 
that we can understand what is of God and what is not. 

(Heb. 8:10.) That embraces everything, the full, 
mature understanding intelligence of the people of 
God, not being driven about by every wind of doctrine, 
not being at the mercy of spiritual impulses, but be- 
ing mature, vigorous, understanding people who know 
the will of God and do it. 

(Rom. 8:6.) " Carnal mind," in this sense, is what 
we all call " common sense.' ' If you ask yourself 
what common sense is, it simply means the mature, 
responsible intelligence of a responsible being, and 
you will find that over and over again (we are bridg- 
ing now between spiritual and bewildered nous) you 
will begin to find how those two things clash before 
they harmonize. The soul gets thoroughly bewildered. 
We are not dealing with the "carnal mind ,? in the deep 
moral sense, but only on the responsible intelligence 
side, it sets itself against the spiritual understanding, 
it won't be reconciled to it, just as it won't be re- 
conciled to it morally, and until the " common sense' ' 
becomes " sanctified sense" (not sanctified common 
sense, that is not a Bible phrase or a Bible meaning), 
until the responsible intelligence of my mind be- 
comes reformed by the Spirit of God, the antagon- 
ism goes on. We are all perfectly familiar with the 
"carnal mind" in the moral way, it is wrong longings, 



Man's Universe. 249 

and seekings and antipathies to God, but it takes a 
good deal of courage to confess and to face that it 
is absolutely wrong in its responsible thinking, and 
it will give verdicts against Jesus Christ as the Phari- 
sees did, it will decide straight off that Jesus Christ 's 
mind and responsible intelligence are the responsible 
intelligence of a madman, or the irresponsible intelli- 
gence of a mere dreamer. You will find, when you 
begin to think along God's line, an amazing clash 
with certain things that were accepted as being 
inalienable "rights" for everybody, and you will 
find that Jesus Christ's teaching works from an- 
other standpoint, and the clashing brings confusion 
and bewildering for a time, until we are resolved 
to remove from ourselves altogether the old habits 
and ways of looking at things, and look at every- 
thing now from the "mind of Christ" standpoint. 
"If any man is in Christ Jesus he is a new creation," 
not only spirit and soul, but in every other way, and 
we slowly see the new creation all through. 

Bewildered Nous. Jesus said He came to send a 
sword, and this always happens; when His Spirit 
comes in it confuses the responsible intelligence of a 
man, turns him upside down. This is different from 
conviction of sin. 

(2 Cor. 11 : 3.) There is the responsible intelligence 
of a devil being allowed entrance into Eve by subtlety, 
and bewildering her straight off from understanding 
God's will or obeying it, and Paul says here he hopes 
that none will be bewitched in that way. He said 
to the Galatians, "Who hath bewitched you?" This 



250 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

conflict of responsible intelligence goes on at the 
beginning of Christian life when people are in 
danger of becoming "legal." Paul said, "I am 
afraid of you, lest my labor is in vain," lest you 
get all wrong, you are now going back again to 
the old ways of making yourself perfect; the old 
legal notions; and that is the way sometimes the 
subtlety of Satan takes away from the power of 
God, the life that was coming under the dominion 
of the Spirit of God. Our Lord alludes to the same 
thing when He says the "cares of this world, the de- 
ceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things be- 
wilder you, choke w T hat I put in." So no wonder 
the first law of a born-again soul is concentration. 
(We hear a great deal about consecration, but we do 
not hear so much about concentration.) 

The consequence of a bewildered soul is that of 
doubleness. (Jas. 1:8.) " Switherers, " that is a 
very apt description of a bewildered soul. Eesponsible 
intelligence of the world pulling, and the responsible 
intelligence of the mind of Christ pulling too, and 
you do not know which to take. "Don't let that man 
think he shall receive anything" because he will not, 
he is a "switherer." He has to decide whether he 
will be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ to the 
crucifixion of the old type altogether, and to the 
turning out, not only of the "old man," but of 
the old responsible intelligence, the old bondage, 
the old legalism, the old thing that used to guide 
the life before, and get in the totally new mind. It 
works this way, in your practical life you will come 



Man's Universe. 251 

now and again into crises where there will be two dis- 
tinct ways before you, one the way of ordinary, strong, 
moral, common sense, and the other waiting on God un- 
til the mind be formed to understand God's way. You 
will find any amount of " backing' ' in the first line, you 
will find the backing of worldly people, and the back- 
ing of semi-Christian people, but you will get the 
warning, the drawing back of the Spirit of God, and 
if you wait on God, study His Word and watch cir- 
cumstances, you will be brought to a new decision so 
that your worldly backers and your semi-Christian 
backers will fall from you with disgust and say it 
is absurd, you are getting fanatical. That is the way 
we begin to form a responsible intelligence, and we 
must not grieve the Spirit of God in these lines. 

1. Spirit as Soul-Making Power — (a) Particular 
Form, (b) Personal Form, (c) Physical Form. 

"We are now dealing with Man's Universe, the 
Particular Form, the Personal Form, and the Physical 
Form. Remember, the whole meaning of my soul life 
is this, to express what my spirit means, and the 
struggle of spirit is to get itself expressed in my soul. 
Take it in the natural line, you will find when an 
immature mind tries' to express itself, there are tre- 
mendous struggles and all kinds of physical exertions 
and efforts. It has not the power of expressing itself, 
it has not a responsible intelligence, it has not a vocab- 
ulary, and you get the exquisite suffering of young 
lives trying to express the spirit that is in them. 
Music is run to, theatres are run to, literature is run 
to, anything to get the power of expressing what is 



252 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

in "longing"; and if I go on too long on the music 
line, or the art line, or the literature line of things, 
I will never form a responsible intelligence, I will 
be the most unpractical of all beings on the face of 
the earth, and the discipline of the machinery of 
life is to get the power to express what is in 
you. That is what language is. The difference in 
the histories of languages is very wonderful. Take 
the language of our authorized Bible and the lan- 
guage we use to-day, the difference is enormous. 
The old Saxon words that the Bible is translated 
into are the words that express the inward soul 
for the first time, the words we use now are nearly 
all technical, borrowed from something else, and 
our words, our most modern words, are not .those 
that express the spirit at all, they are those that cloak 
it up cunningly, no expression. In the natural person, 
the young person, this kind of thing is often heard, 
"Oh, I don't understand myself, nobody else under- 
stands me!" Why, of course you don't, but you are 
responsible for not having a responsible intelligence 
to know where you can be understood. (Read Psa. 
139.) If it is true in the natural world that a mind 
trying to express itself gets all these kinds of turmoils, 
it is just as true spiritually. 

That is the meaning of education, education is 
not to pack into me something that is alien, but some- 
thing that gives me the power to "draw out" what 
is in me. One of the greatest benefits to a young 
life trying to express itself is to give it something to 
work with its hands, to model in wax, or to paint, or 



t .- Man's Universe. 253 

write, or dig, or form ; the power of expression. Take it 
on the spiritual line, when the Spirit of God comes 
into me, the same struggles go on, He trying to get 
me into line, out of the "natural ruts," He tries to 
get me to obey Him so that He can express Himself 
through my responsible intelligence, and you have 
the throes and the pains of the spiritual life when you 
are Spirit-born, till the mind of Christ is in you, and 
the old carnal antagonism is no more. That is why 
we find the value, as Paul says, of spiritual teachprs 
and helpers, because they express to us what we have 
been trying to express for ourselves, and could not, 
and immediately some book or person has expressed 
for me what I have been trying to learn how to ex- 
press for myself I feel unspeakably grateful, and that is 
the way I begin to learn how to express for myself. 
Tribulation will teach you, your circumstances will 
teach you, difficult things will teach you, temptations 
of the devil will teach ypu, all these things will de- 
velop the power of expression all through until we 
get in our words and works to be as responsible in 
expression of the Spirit of God as Jesus Christ was 
the responsible expression of the mind of God Al- 
mighty. 

(a) Particular Forms. All the particular forms 
of nature — rocks and trees, animals and men — are 
the outcome of the breathing of the Spirit of God. 
There is a true law of correspondence between the 
things we see and the mind behind them. When we 
have the mind behind the things in us, we begin to 
understand how these things manifest it, but if we 



254 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

have not the mind behind them, we will never under- 
stand them. 

Then (b) the Personal Form. That means a man 
has a distinct responsibility of his own, and he can 
express in a responsible way either by the spirit of 
the devil or by the Spirit of God ; he can express the 
spirit of the "prince of this world" in a responsible, 
intelligent way, or he can express the Spirit of God 
in a responsible, intelligent way. That is what we 
mean by a man showing "soul" in his writing, 
"soul" in his speaking, "soul" in his praying, 
"soul" in his manner of living; the man has 
power to express himself and you can feel all the 
time the personal note coming out. Now, God is called 
a Person, therefore by His creation He expresses the 
peculiar stamp of His personal outlook, and when 
we have His Spirit within us and are forming a re- 
sponsible intelligence, we begin to think His thoughts 
after Him, we begin to see what His meaning is, not 
by our natural intelligence, but by the Spirit of God 
when we allow the Spirit to form in us "the mind of 
Christ." 

Then (c) the Physical Form, or expression. That 
simply means that this physical life is meant to ex- 
press all that is in the spirit. The soul has been 
struggling in travail of birth, and when it is expressed 
in the body it has reached its zone of expressions 
"When children get into "tempers," remember, often 
it is an attempt to express themselves, the soul has 
not the birth-pangs strong enough, the spirit can- 
not express itself. Paul says, "When it pleased God, 



Man's Universe. 255 

who separated me from my mother's womb, to reveal 
His Son in me." That is stating just this idea. To 
begin with, we have not our "own bodies, " pro- 
bably we have a body very much like our grandmoth- 
er's or grandfather's or someone's else, but every few 
years these physical forms alter, and they alter into 
the shape of my ruling spirit, and slowly and surely 
we will find a beautifully moulded face may take on 
a remarkably unbeautiful moral expression as it grows 
older, or we may look on a very ugly face and see 
it, as it grows older, take on a remarkably beautiful 
moral expression. The physical life must express, 
sooner or later, through the turmoil in the soul, the 
ruling spirit, and we grow exactly like what our spirit 
is. If our spirit is the spirit of a man, then we will 
grow further and further away from the image of 
God. If we have the Spirit of God in us, then 
we will grow more and more into "the same image 
from glory to glory." 

2. Spirit in the Flesh — (a) Independent, (b) De- 
pendent, (c) Death. 

In this expression of the spirit in my flesh, 
we have three things. Where it is independent 
of the flesh, to begin with, you find the divorce 
between a person who is spiritually born again and 
the fleshly expression. (Beware of that phrase, we 
hear over and over again, that there is no difference 
between the external life of a Spirit-born person and 
a sanctified person. It is untrue, there is a tremendous 
difference. It is untrue to God, and untrue to experi- 
ence*) When a person is born again of the Spirit, 



256 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

the flesh does not express anything like to the same 
degree that it does when sanctification has been 
reached. Why? Because it has not yet learned obedi- 
ence to God. When the soul is brought into harmony 
with the mind of God and is willing to enter into 
identification with the mind of Jesus Christ, something 
like the following happens: in the first place, the 
Spirit works (a) in independence of the flesh and you 
get the conviction of sin. The Spirit of God produces 
very great darkness and difficulty in the soul when 
He comes in, He produces the discernment of the 
wrong mind, He produces the discernment that makes 
the spirit pant and yearn and long after being made 
like God, and there is nothing that can comfort the 
soul that is born of the Spirit, but God, and the only 
hope for that spirit is concentration on obedience to 
the Spirit of God. (2 Cor. 2:11-14.) So when the 
Spirit of God comes into me, He does not express 
Himself straight off in my flesh; He works independ- 
ently of my flesh, and I am conscious of the divorce. 
I gain slow, sure, steady victories, but I am conscious 
of the turmoil. The soul is the birthplace of the new 
spirit and the soul struggles while the spirit tries 
to express itself through the body. 

Then take (b) Dependent. This is quite true 
but the other thing is true also, that if I won't 
obey the Spirit, my spirit will become enchained 
to my flesh and absolutely dependent on it, and 
clamoring of the flesh through the avenues of the 
flesh, and the clamoring of the old mind, will gradually 
crush and grieve the Spirit of God away. (2 Cor. 7: 



Man's Universe. 257 

1.) The Spirit of God is independent in me, just as 
my spirit is, to begin with, but it is also true, that the 
insistence of my " flesh,' ' the insistence of the "carnal 
mind," if I don't obey the Spirit of God, will grad- 
ually defile everything the Spirit of God has been 
trying to do. The Spirit "lusts against the flesh 
and the flesh against the Spirit," and we can, when 
the Spirit of God is in us, slowly and surely and vic- 
toriously claim the whole territory for the Spirit of 
God, until, at entire sanctification, the only thing there 
is the Spirit of God, who has enabled me at last to 
form the mind of Christ, and now I begin to grow, 
and manifest that growth in grace which expresses the 
life of Jesus in my own moral flesh. 

Then (c) Death. (Rom. 8:5-7.) That last verse 
is very direct, it puts an end to all absurd squabbles 
as to what is spiritual death. "To be carnally minded 
is death," to be given over to an ordinary, responsible 
intelligence that has not been reformed by the Spirit 
of God, is death, and it will grow and develop further 
and further away from God in its manifestation, until 
the man who has the mind of death can sink so low 
that he is perfectly happy without God. Psalm 73 
describes it, "No bands in his death, he is not trou- 
bled like other men, his eyes stand out with fatness, 
he has everything heart can desire," and the extra- 
ordinary thing is he is the only man the worldly people 
call alive. If you get persons who have the Spirit of 
God in them, slowly manifesting by sanctification the 
mind of Christ in their life, then the world says they 
are "half dead." Peter says they "think it strange 



258 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

that you do not go to the same excess of riot." No 
wonder Paul states that, "If any man is in Christ 
Jesus, he is a new creation, old things have passed 
away, and behold all things have become new." 

"Where are we with regard, to this responsible 
intelligence? How many of us, as Christians who 
are in the definite experience of spiritual life, 
are forming the responsible intelligence and real- 
ize we have to be renewed in the spirit of our 
minds, and for what purpose? That we may be 
able to discern with a responsible intelligence what 
the will of God is for us, the thing that is per- 
fect and acceptable and good and right. All the 
childish clamor of being driven from "pillar to post" 
by every wind of doctrine must cease altogether, and 
the mature, sensible, strong, stable life come. Nothing 
can upset it, neither things present, nor things to 
come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creation. 
Every power it comes against, whether it be ma- 
terial things, or human things, or diabolical things, or 
spiritual things, simply means another occasion for 
forming a deepen and more intelligent grasp of the 
mind of God. As the only way we develop in- 
telligence in the natural world is by coming in con- 
tact with things that are irrational and unintelligent, 
so in the things of God we form the mind of God 
by subduing all to a, spiritual understanding. 



CHAPTER XX. 

SPIRIT: THE DOMAIN AND DOMINION 

OF SPIRIT. 

MAN'S UNIVERSE. 
(1 Cor. 15:45.) 

N. B. We deal here particularly with Spirit in the t( spirit- 
ual' ' man. 

1 SPIEIT IN ITS FEEEDOM FROM FLESH. 

(EXTRAORDINARY.) 

(a) Ecstasy. Acts 10:10; 22:17; 2 Cor. 12:2-4; Rev. 
4: 2. (Sometimes with the body. Acts 8: 39; 2 Cor. 
12: 2-4; 1 Thess. 4: 17; Rev. 12: 5; Matt. 4: 1.) 

(b) Emancipation. Luke 16:25; 23:43; Heb. 12:23. 
(Death). Heb. 4:12; Gal. 5:24; Col, 2:11; Rom. 
6: 6; Gal. 6:8; John 3:8; 20: 22. (Deliverance.) 

2 SPIRIT OPERATING IN SENSE. Ex. 6:9; Prov. 15; 

13; 2 Cor. 2: 13; Acts 17: 11-16; John 11: 33. 

3 SPIRIT OPERATING INWARDLY. Luke 10: 21; 1 Cor. 

2:4; 14: 2, 14-16. (Here we will deal with the 
"Tongues" question.) 

4 SPIRIT OPERATING MORALLY. Ex. 35:21; Acts 19: 

21; 20: 22; Prov. 16: 18; Isa. 11: 2. 

The contrast in 1 Corinthians 15:45 is not a 
contrast of moral worth, but a contrast of rev- 
elation. "Adam" does not mean the "old man," 
"Adam" means there, our human nature, in Adam 
we are made "living souls"; in Christ we are made 

259 



260 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

" living spirits." Never confound the "old man" and 
"Adam/' and never confound the "old man" and 
the "devil," they are not synonymous. The phrase 
here "the first man Adam was made a living soul," 
refers to the great fact of God's creation; "the second 
man Adam was made a quickening spirit," refers to 
God's regenerating work in the living soul. The Bible 
says that man's spirit has not life in itself; that is, 
no spirit in man can will pure will, and love pure love ; 
the Holy Sprit has life in Himself, when He comes 
in He energizes our spirit and enables us to will the 
will of God. 

"We have divided the subject into four parts: 1. 
Spirit in Its Freedom from the Flesh, under two head- 
ings — (a) Extraordinary Ecstacy and (b) Emanci- 
pation; 2. Spirit Operating in Sense; 3. Spirit 
Operating Inwardly, and 4. Spirit Operating Morally. 

1. Spirit in Its Freedom from the Flesh. 

We will take the Extraordinary section. "We mean 
by extraordinary, what the word means, off the or- 
dinary, out of the ordinary, not contrary to the ordi- 
nary, or against it, but out of it. Take first of all 
(a) Ecstacy. Ecstacy means transport, something that 
lifts a man right out of his ordinary setting; a state of 
mind marked by temporary mental alienation, and 
altered consciousness. By that a man's soul gets into 
the condition of seeing and hearing apart from his 
bodily organs. 

We have to bear in mind there are facts revealed 
in God's Book that are not common to our experience, 
and it is a great moment reached in my mental life 



Man's Universe. 261. 

when 1 have ray mind opened to the fact that there 
ar? states of experience which the majority of us know 
nothing about, either for good or bad, and ecstacy 
is one of them. For instance, it is a very easy busi- 
ness to ridicule, but ridicule may be a sign of ignorance. 
It simply means, "Nobody has ever seen or understood 
anything that I have not, and if they say they have, 
they are fools/ ' That means that I put myself 
in the place of the Lord, and I know everything 
that everybody can experience, and if they say they 
have seen things that I have not, then I laugh at 
them. That is because I am a fool. Paul uses 
exactly that argument about the testimony for sanc- 
tification and the testimony for "Christ crucified ;" 
he says it is foolishness to those that seek after 
wisdom, they say it is stupid, they tell you point 
blank to your face no man ever was sanctified, and if 
you say you are, you are a liar, or you suffer from 
hallucinations. Do let us see that we do not take the 
same attitude to these other things as well, it is quite 
possible that a good many of us may have just this 
mental attitude to these extraordinary experiences re- 
corded in God's Book. 

First of all, ecstacy where the man's soul is 
taken out of the bodily relationship into an ex- 
traordinary state where it sees and hears things 
without the bodily organs. (Acts 10:10.) The word 
" trance' ' there does not mean "faint," the word 
1 ' trance * ' means exactly what ' ' ecstacy ' ' means. (Acts 
22: 17.) Again that refers to ecstacy. If you read the 
context immediately afterwards you find the exact 



262 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

description given of an ecstacy, seeing and hearing 
apart from the bodily organs. (2 Cor. 12:2-4; Rev. 
4:2.) Each one of these verses refers to ecstacy. Paul, 
in recounting the experience of fourteen years previous, 
says, M l do not know whether the man was in the 
body or out of it." Now remember, that power of 
a human soul may be for good or bad. Indian necrom- 
ancy can produce exactly those states, and nothing 
but ignorance and stupidity makes us say they cannot, 
they can. Indian necromancers can take a man's per- 
sonality right out of his bodily setting and put him 
into another setting where he sees and hears altogether 
apart from his body. 

Take the next thing in ecstacy, where the body is 
sometimes taken with the spirit in these extraordinary 
conditions. (Acts 8:39.) There is the taking of the 
body with the soul by extraordinary transportation, 
by a supernatural aeroplane, by an ecstacy ; something 
absolutely unusual. (1 Thess. 4:17.) That refers 
to the instantaneous change of a "material body" into 
a "glorified" one. (Rev. 12:5; Matt. 4:1.) The 
very same idea there. After our Lord's resurrec- 
tion He appeared to the disciples during the forty 
days, that is, He had power to "materialize" when- 
ever He chose. For instance, after the resurrec- 
tion Jesus ate fish and honeycomb. In the Millen- 
nium we shall have exactly the same power, as saints. 
We are to reign with Him in the "air." Conceivable 
to you? If it is, it is not conceivable to me. I do not 
know how I am going to stay up in the "air" "with 
the Lord." It is no business of mine, all I know is 



Man's Universe. 263 

that revelation says so, and we will do so. What we are 
arguing for is an open mind about something that we 
can know nothing about as yet. (The Bible states it, 
and if I say it does not mean what it says, I put myself 
in the place of the Almighty. Immediately there is a 
record of an experience I have never had, and I say 
it is nonsense, I put myself in the place of the superior 
person, an attitude I have no business to take.) The 
marvelous power of the resurrection body, the glori- 
fied body is pictured in the Lord Jesus Christ. He 
could materialize whenever He chose, He proved He 
could, He could disappear whenever He chose, and we 
shall do exactly the same. Just think of the time 
when all your thinking will be in language as soon as 
you think it! The majority of us who have the idea 
that we are penned up in a little physical temple, are 
altogether twisted off the Bible revelation. "We are 
in this order of things, penned in this temple, for a 
particular reason, but at any second God can change 
this temple, in the "twinkling of an eye" into a 
glorified body. 

Another thing, the question of eestacies and trans- 
portation of bodies as well as spirits is indicated in the 
Bible, does it contradict common sense? It certainly 
does not, it transcends it. A miracle? It is no more 
a miracle than that I am alive, not a bit more of a mir- 
acle. Why should it be more of a miracle that God 
can transform me into the image of His Son by resur- 
rection, than the fact that I am alive now? How is 
it that I am alive now? How is it that this material 
wood of this table and the material flesh of my hand 



264 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

are different ? If we can explain that, we can explain 
the other, God who made the one made the other. The 
point I am driving at is that we have to remember that 
God is a Spirit, and the consequence is that at any 
moment He may turn upside down man's calculations 
about what He will do and what He won't do. Scien- 
tific men have long reached the conclusion that they 
dare not produce what they call their "experimental 
curve" beyond into the "inferential region." Now 
pseudo-scientific men do, the average scientific men say 
that according to the common record of common ex- 
perience such and such is the case; if there is an iso- 
lated experience they put it by itself, they do not say 
it cannot be, they say it does not come into their line of 
explanation. The false scientists say because the 
majority of human beings have never experienced this, 
therefore it is untrue. No real scientist ever said such 
a thing. It is simply "part and parcel" of the subject 
of our own personality. As long as we are flippant and 
stupid and shallow and think we know ourselves, we 
will never give ourselves over to Jesus Christ. Once we 
become conscious that we are infinitely more than we 
can fathom, and infinitely more terrible than we can 
know, either for good or bad, we will be only too glad 
to hand ourselves over to the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Mystery there must be, but the remarkable 
thing about the mysteries of the Bible is that 
they never contradict human reason, they tran- 
scend it. Now the mysteries of every other re- 
ligion contradict human reason. Every one of the 
miracles (which simply mean the public power of God) 



Man's Universe. 265 

transcends human reason, but not one of them contra- 
dicts human reason. Water turned into wine, it is 
done every year all over the world in process of time. 
Water is sucked up through the stem of a vine and 
turned into grapes, who does it? When it is done 
suddenly by the same Being who does it gradually, 
why should it be considered more of a miracle? The 
water turned suddenly into wine by Jesus at Cana 
does not contradict human reason, it transcends it. 
When Jesus Christ raised a man suddenly from the 
dead, He simply did what we all believe, in our im- 
plicit hearts, He is going to do presently. 

Have any of us got sealed minds about facts 
in Gad's Book that we have never experienced, 
or do we try to apologize for them, do we try 
to make out that Philip was not carried away 
suddenly, do we try to make out that the apos- 
tle Paul was not caught up into the " third heaven," 
do we try to make out that Peter did not fall into a 
"trance" and see all the things he did see and learn 
all the things he did learn? That is the danger. Ac- 
cept them as facts and you will find an enormous illumi- 
nation to your understanding of how things can hap- 
pen, marvelously with the great, mighty God. 

Take the next thing, manifestation. We are 
dealing with spirit in its freedom from the flesh. 
(We mean by flesh, this body we are in, not 
the "mind of the flesh.") It is possible, then, for the 
spirit to exist apart altogether from man's body. 
Take it in (b) Emancipation from the flesh while we 
are here. 



266 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

(Luke 16:25.) That refers to the place where the 
flesh is not, the unseen. (Luke 23:43.) That again 
refers to the place where the flesh cannot be, the un- 
seen. (Heb. 13:13.) In our own minds we quite 
agree that the Bible points out that man's spirit is 
immortal, whether he be energized by the Spirit of 
God or whether he is not, that is, spirit never sleeps, 
that instead of sleeping at what we call death, at the 
breaking away from this body, his spirit is ten thou- 
sand-fold more awake. The majority of us in this 
body have our spirits half concealed. Eemember, spirit 
and personality are synonymous, but man's personality 
is obscured as long as he is in this body. Im- 
mediately he dies, it is no more obscured, it is abso- 
lutely awake then. "Son, remember," no limitations 
now, he is face to face with everything else that is of 
spirit. That is what the Bible reveals. Soul and body 
depend on one another, spirit does not, spirit is im- 
mortal; soul is simply the spirit expressing itself in 
the body. Immediately body goes, soul is gone, but 
immediately body is brought back, soul is brought 
back. That means spirit, soul and body will be to- 
gether. Spirit has never died, never can die, in the sense 
the body dies ; the spirit is immortal, either in immor- 
tal death or immortal life. There is no such thing as 
annihilation in the Bible. The suspension of spirit, 
apart from body and soul, is a mere temporary busi- 
ness. In the resurrection, remember it is the resurrec- 
tion of the body. 

(John 5:29, 30.) The picture of the resurrec- 
tion body of the bad is not given, but it is stated 



Man 's Universe. 267 

emphatically by Jesus that there will be a resur- 
rection of the bad. Our Lord never talks about the 
resurrection of the spirit, the spirit never needs resur- 
recting. It is the resurrection of a resurrection body 
for "damnation" and a resurrection body for "glori- 
fication." Now we know what the resurrection body 
for "glorification" is, it is like Jesus Christ and 
all we know about the resurrection of the bad 
is that Jesus Christ (who ought to know what He 
is talking about), says that there will be a resurrec- 
tion to damnation. The question of eternal punishment 
is a fearful one, but let no one say that Jesus Christ 
did not say anything about it, He did, He said it in 
language we can't begin to understand, and He spoke 
about it oftener than He spoke about Heaven, and if 
anybody should know surely Jesus Christ should. The 
least thing we can do is to be reverent with what we 
do not understand. 

Then take (b) Emancipation in the sense of deliver- 
ance. (Heb. 4:12.) That is what the "Word of God 
does, it discerns between the soul and the spirit. Mod- 
ern Christians do not, modern Christians say spirit 
and soul are the same thing ; the Word of God discerns 
all through. Immediately the Spirit of God comes 
into my mind and heart He divides between the two 
instantly. That is how He convicts of sin. (Gal. 5 : 24.) 
What is flesh? Paul is not talking about disembodied 
spirits, then he certainly does not mean this flesh, he 
does not mean mortal flesh, he is not talking to a lot 
of corpses, he is talking to living men and women. 
Crucifixion means death. Then he is referring to a 



268 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

disposition on the inside and lie calls it the flesh. 
Whenever Paul means this body, he speaks of it as 
mortal flesh ; whenever he refers to the old disposition, 
he calls it the flesh. (Col. 2 : 11 ; Rom. 6:6; Gal. 6:8; 
John 5:8; 20:22.) This emancipation is deliverance 
while I am in this flesh, not counteraction, not suppres- 
sion. In Paul's mind and in the teaching of the New 
Testament, man can be delivered, from the "old man," 
and Paul says, "Let God be true and every man a 
liar." In the majority of human testimonies the con- 
tradiction is given to the apostle Paul. Which are 
you going to side with? It may begin in counterac- 
tions, but, blessed be God ! emancipation is possible here 
and now. 

Emancipation does not remove the possibility 
of disobedience; if it did, I would cease to be 
a human being. If the removal of the old dis- 
position is made to mean that God has removed my 
human nature, then it is absurd and false. God re- 
moves the wrong disposition, but He never alters my 
human nature, I have the same body, the same eyes, the 
same imperfect brain and nervous system, but Paul's 
argument is, this body that you used to use as obedient 
slaves to the wrong disposition, you can now use as 
obedient slaves to the new disposition, and the mar- 
vel is that you will find the Spirit operating in sense. 

We have been dealing with the emancipation of the 
spirit from the slavery of sin, now we are going to 
show how the Bible says the Spirit can operate through 
the senses, can express through my life that I am de- 
livered, if I am delivered; no "reckoning" and hood- 



Man's Universe. 269 

ranking, no pretending I am emancipated when I am 
not, but manifestation through every cell of my 
body that God has done what my mouth testifies He 
has done. 

Exodus 6 : 9. That is an expression of how the 
spirit in the children of Israel had distorted their 
sense, they could not listen. (Prov. 15:13.) When a 
man is happy, he can't pull a long face in the natural 
world, he will try to, but it is the face of a clown; 
when he is happy inside he shows it outside. To hear 
a Christian with a sad face saying, "Oh, I am so full 
of the joy of the Lord! I am so happy!" Well, you 
know it is not true. If I am full of the joy of the 
Lord, it will pour out of every cell of my body. (2 Cor. 
2: 13.) All the uses of the term "spirit" in these pas- 
sages is spirit that instantly shows itself in the flesh. 
The spirit of wrong shows itself in a man's flesh, and 
thank God, the Spirit of God does the same thing. 
(Acts 17 : 11-16 ; John 11 : 33.) The real Greek in that 
verse is, "He shook Himself violently with indigna- 
tion." 

2. Spirit Operating in Sense. 

As soon as you get rightly related to God, the prince 
of this world has his last stake in this flesh. So many 
Christian workers do not know that, and he will 
wear you out to the last cell if you are work- 
ing for God, but if you know his "trick" and 
God's grace, you will get supernatural physical recu- 
peration every time you are exhausted in God's 
work, and the only sign that it is God's work is 
that you know the supernatural recuperation. As 



270 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

soon as you get right with God, Satan will suck every 
bit of your physical life out of you if he can. In the 
natural world, when you are doing work and are ex- 
hausted, what have you to do? You have to take a 
holiday and iron tonics, but if you are exhausted in 
God 's work, all the iron tonics in the world will never 
touch you, the only thing that will recuperate you is 
God Himself. Paul, in Acts 20:24, said, "I do not 
count my life dear unto myself/' and when the "dear 
sisters' ' and "brothers" say, "My sister, you must not 
work so hard," simply say, "Get thee behind me, Sa- 
tan." Remember, Satan's last stake is on this very 
line, and when once you learn that "all your springs 
are" in God, you will draw on Him. The Spirit does 
operate in the flesh. Beware of laying off before God 
tells you; if you lay off before God tells you, you will 
rust, and that leads to "dry rot" always. 

3. Spirit Operating Inwardly. 

As the Spirit operates outwardly through my 
senses it operates inwardly towards God. (Luke 
10:21.) There our Lord is talking inwardly by 
His Spirit to God, not through His senses. (2 Cor. 
2:4.) That is why the preaching of the Gospel is 
supreme idiocy, that is the meaning of Paul when 
he says the preaching of the cross is ridiculous to the 
wisdom of this world. "When you have the Spirit 
of God in you, you find Paul's preaching is according 
to the wisdom of God; when you have not the 
Spirit of God in you, the preaching of Christ crucified 
is stupid, nothing else. 

(1 Cor. 14: 14-16.) Now the question of tongues in 



Man's Universe. 271 

the fourteenth chapter of First Corinthians is not a for- 
eign-language tongue, but what is called "glossalalia," 
that means a spiritual gibberish, nothing intelligible 
in it. Paul tells you how it comes about; as a baby 
before its human spirit has worked through its soul 
for expression blethers, so a soul after being born of 
the Holy Ghost is apt to be carried away with the 
same emotional ecstacy. Try and understand a baby, 
you cannot, unless you are its mother, then possibly 
you may, and Paul deals with these people the same 
way. Paul says what you have to do is to get your 
spirit into a spiritual "nous," into an understanding 
whereby you can express it. For instance, all phrases 
like "Hallelujah!" and "Glory be to God!" arise 
from the same thing. When first a soul is introduced 
by the Spirit of God to the heavenly domain, there 
is all the tremendous bursting up of new life in the 
soul, and there is no language for it, but the "lala" of 
the Corinthians, or the Psalms of David. Paul says, Get 
to the understanding point as soon as ever you can; 
this thing will produce disgraceful mockery among the 
nations if you don't watch what you are doing; if I 
come into your meetings and see you are jabbering, 
all I can think is you are giving occasion to the 
enemy to blaspheme. As long as you are amongst 
people who know who you are and what you are do- 
ing, that you are spiritual babes, all well, but if you 
begin to parade it abroad, as they had been taught 
to do, it's not well. May God forgive the teachers, 
for they were inspired by the devil, and God's blight 
has been on them. 



272 Spirit: Domain and Dominion. 

The first thing we have to note when we are 
introduced by the Spirit of God into a new do- 
main, is that we have no language; sighings and 
groanings and tears, but no language, spiritual 
babyhood. Now Paul says, "Get instructed, ' ' and the 
wisest way you can get instructed is to get the Psalms 
to express for you ; when you are worked up to pitches 
like that, read some of the Psalms and you will find 
the Spirit of God gradually teaches you how to have 
a spiritual "nous," a mind whereby you will under- 
stand, and then slowly and surely you will get to the 
place where you are lifted up into a totally new 
language. The gift of tongues at Pentecost was 
not the gift of "glossalalia," it was the gift of new 
language. The responsibility all through with the 
modern Tongues Movement is with the teachers. May 
God have mercy on them! 

4. Spirit Operating Morally. 

The Spirit working through the senses and working 
inwardly to God, produces a moral character just like 
Jesus Christ's, a morality and an uprightness like 
His. The worthiness of our Lord Jesus Christ is moral 
worth, in the human and divine sphere, and our moral 
worth is the same. 

God grant that we may ever walk in the Spirit, and 
thus not fulfill the lusts of the flesh! 

N. B. This ends abruptly, but we leave it so. 
The w;hole book is merely a verbatim report of the 
lectures; the task of altering it to make it fit for 
publication would have been too stupendous. We have 



Man's Universe. 273 



therefore decided to let it go for what it is worth — a 
mere effort to rouse up the average Christian worker 
to study the wealth of the Scripture, and to become 
better equipped for dividing the Word of Truth. The 
lectures are going on week by week and year by year, 
not in repetition, but in exhaustive detail of all laid 
down here in such scamped and hasty manner. 
God bless all who care to read the book! 



INDEX 



CHAPTER I. 

Man: His Creation, Calling, and Communion. 

1. Conditions before Man's Creation. 

(a) Celestial Creations. 

(b) Celestial Catastrophe. 

(c) Celestia] Condemnation. 

2. Conditions Leading to Man's Creation. 

(a) Terrestrial Chaos. 

(b) Terrestrial Creations. 

(c) Terrestrial Cosmos. 

3. Climax of Creation. 

(a) Son of God. 

(b) Six Days' Work. 

(c) The Sabbath Best. 

CHAPTER XL 

Man: His Creation, Calling, and Communion. 
Main's Making. 

4. The Man of God's Making. 

(a) The Image of God. 

(b) The Image of God in Angels. 

(c) The Image of God in Man. 

5. The Manner of Man's Making. 

(a) Man's Body. 

(b) Man's Soul. 

(c) Man's Self -consciousness. 

CHAPTER in. 

Man: His Creation, Calling, and Communion. 
Mtin's Unmaking. 

1. The Primal Anarchy. 

(a) The Serpent. 

(b) The Serpent and Eve. 

(c) The Serpent, Eve and Adam. 

2. The Pre-Adamic Anarchy. 

(a) Satanic Pretensious. 

(b) Satanic Perversions. 

(c) Satanic Perils. 



INDEX (Continued) 

3. The Punished Anarchists. 

(a) Destitution and Death. 

(b) Division from Deity. 

(c) Divine Declaration. 

CHAPTEE IV. 

Man: His Creation, Calling, and Communion. 
Eeadjustment by Eedemption. 

1. Incarnation — Word Made Weak. 

God-Man. 

(,a) Self-surrender of Trinity. 

(b) Self-same with Trinity. 

(c) Self-sufficiency of Trinity. 

2. Identification — Son Made Sin. 
God and Man. 

(a) Day of His Death. 

(b) Day of His Eesurrection. 

(c) Day of His Ascension. 

3. Invasion — Sinner Made Saint. 
God in Man. 

(a) The New Mfin. 

(b) The New Manners. 

(c) The New Mankind. 

CHAPTEE V. 

Soul: The Essence, Existence, and Expression. 

1. The Term Soul (Generally). 

(a) Applied to Men and Animals. 

(b) Applied to Men, not Animals. 

(c) Applied to Men Individually. 

2. Truth about the Soul (Specifically). 

(a) Soul and Spirit. 

(b) Soul and Body. 

(c) Soul and Personality. 

CHAPTEE VI. 

Soul: The Essence, Existence, and Expression. 
Fundametnal Powers of the Soul. 

1. Contraction. 

(a) First Power — Self -comprehending. 

(b) Second Power — Stretching beyond Itself. 

2. Expansion. 

(c) Third Power — Self -living. 

(d) Fourth Power — Spirit-penetration. 

3. Eotation. 

(e) Fifth Power — Stirred Sensually or Spiritually. 



INDEX (Continued) 

(f) Sixth Power — Speaking the Spirit's Thoughts. 

(g) Seventh Power — Sum Total in Unity. 

CHAPTEB VII. 

Soul: The Essence, Existence, and Expression. 
Fleshly Presentation of the Soul. 

1. In Embryo. 

(a) Before Consciousness. 

(b) Breath Consciousness. 

(c) Blood Circulation. 

2. In Evolution. 

(d) The Hub of Life. 

(e) Hubbub of Life. 

(1) Sense of Seeing. 

(2) Sense of Hearing. 

(3) Sense of Tasting. 

(4) Sense of Smelling. 

(5) Sense of Touching. 

3. In Expression. 

(f ) Hilarity of Life. 

(g) Himself. 

CHAPTER Vm. 

Soul: The Essence, Existence, and Expression. 
Past, Present and Future of the Soul. 

1. Pre-existence. 

(a) Spurious Speculations. 

(b) Startling Scriptures. 

(c) Steadying Scriptures. 

(1) No Soul before Body. 

(2) No Soul Destiny pre-Adamie. 

(3) No Soul but by Pro-creation. 

2. Present Existence. 

(a) Satisfaction of the Soul. 

(b) Sins and Surroundings of the Soul. 

(c) Supernatural Setting for the Soul. 

3. Perpetual Existence. 

(a) The Mortal Aspect of the Soul. 

(b) The Immortal Aspect of the Soul. 

(c) Eternal Life and Eternal Death of the Soul. 

CHAPTER IX. 

Heart: The Radical Region of Life. 

1. The Centre of the Physical Life. 
(a) Lifeless Objects. 



INDEX (Continued) 





(b) Lowest Life Power. 




(c) Life Power. 




(d) Life of the Whole Person, 


2. 


The Centre of Practical Life. 




(a) Emporium. 




(b) Export. 




(c) Import. 




CHAPTEB X. 


Heart: ' 


rhe Radical Region of Life. 


The Badiator of Personal Life. 


1. 


Voluntary. 




(a) Determination. 




(b) Design. 


2. 


Versatility. 




(a) Perception. 




(b) Meditation. 




(c) Estimation. 




(d) Inclination. 


3. 


Virtues and Vices. 




(a) All Degrees of Joy. 




(b) All Degrees of Pain. 




(c) All Degrees of Ill-will. 



CHAPTER XL 

Heart: The Radical Region of Life. 

The Radiator of Personal Life (Concluded), 

1. Voluntary. 

(c) Love. 

(d) Hate. 

2. Versatility. 

(e) Memory. 

(f) Thinking. 

(g) Birth of Words. 

3. Virtues and Vices. 

(d) All Degrees of Fear. 

(e) All Degrees of Anguish. 

(f) All Conscious Unity. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Heart: The Radical Region of Life. 

The Rendezvous of Perfect Life. 
1. The Inner. 

(a) Highest Love. 

(b) Highest License, 
(e) Darkened. 



INDEX (Continued) 

(d) Hardened. 

2. The Inmost. 

(a) Laboratory of Life. 

(b) Lusts. 

(c) Law of Nature. 

(d) Law of Grace. 

(e) Seat of Conscience. 

(f) Seat of Belief and Disbelief. 

3. The Innermost. 

(a) Inspiration of God. 

(b) Inspiration of Satan. 

(c) Indwelling of Christ. 

(d) Indwelling of Spirit. 

(e) Abode of Peace. 

(f) Abode of Love. 

(g) Abode of Light. 

(h) Abode of Communication. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

Ourselves as a Known." I the "Ego." 

1. Some Distinctions of Importance. 

(a) Individuality. 

(b) Personality. 

(c) Egoism and Egotism. 

2. Some Determinations of Interest. 

(a) The Ego is Inscrutable. 

(b) The Ego is Introspective. 

(c) The Ego is Individual. 

3. Some Delusions of Importance. 

(a) The Ego in Delusions of Insanity. 

(b) The Ego in Delusions of Alternating Personalities. 

(c) The Ego in Delusions of Mediums 

and Possessions. 

4. Some Discriminations of Interest. 

(a) Independence of the Persons. 

(b) Identification with Purpose. 

(c) Incorporation of the Power. 

CHAPTEE XIV. 

Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

Ourselves as "Known." "Me." 

1. The Sensuous "Me." 

(a) My Body. 

(b) My Bounty. 

(c) My Blessings. 

2. The Social "Me." 



INDEX (Continued) 

(a) My Success. 

(b) My Sociability. 

(c) My Satisfaction. 
3. The Spiritual "Me." 

(a) My Mind. 

(b) My Morals. 

(c) My Mysticism. 

CHAPTER XV. 

Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

Ourselves as "Ourselves." "Self." 

1. Self. 

(a) Greatness. 

(b) Groveling. 

2. Self-seeking. 

(a) Honor. 

(b) Humility. 

3. Self-estimation. 

(a) Superiority. 

(b) Inferiority. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

Ourselves: I; Me; Mine. 

Ourselves and Conscience. 

1. Conscience before the Fall. 

(a) Consciousness of Self. 

(b) Consciousness of the World. 

(c) Consciousness of God. 

2. Conscience after the Fall. 

(a) Standard of the Natural Person. 

(b) The Standard of the Nations — Pagan. 

(c) The Standard of the Naturally Pious. 

3. Conscience in the Faithful. 

(a) Conscience and Character in the Saint. 

(b) Conscience and Conduct in the Saint. 

(c) Conscience and Communion of the Saints. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

Spirit: The Domain and Dominion of Spirit. 
Process of the Trinity. 

1. Will. 

2. Love. 

3. Light. 



INDEX (Continued) 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

Spirit: The Domain and Dominion o| Spirit. 
Mundane Universe. 
1. Spirit as Physical Force. 

(a) World of Matter. 

(b) World of Nature. 

(c) World of Self. 

CHAPTER XIX. 

Spirit: The Domain and Dominion of Spirit. 
Man's Universe. 
1. Spirit as Soul-making Power. 

(a) Particular Form. 

(b) Personal Form. 

(c) Physical Form. 

CHAPTER XX. 

Spirit: The Domain and Dominion of Spirit. 
Man's Universe (Concluded). 

1. Spirit in Its Freedom from Flesh. 

(a) Ecstasy. 

(b) Emancipation, 

2. Spirit Operating in Sense. 

3. Spirit Operating Inwardly. 

4. Spirit Operating Morally. 



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